Padilla Secures $60 Million for Climate-Resilient Transportation Infrastructure and Evacuation Routes Across California

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) April 8 announced that California will receive $60.6 million to help communities across the state better prepare for and respond to extreme weather events like wildfires, flooding and extreme heat. This funding was made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which established the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation or PROTECT Grant Program.

The PROTECT grant program funds projects to make transportation infrastructure more resilient to future weather events and other natural disasters by focusing on resilience planning, making resilience improvements to existing transportation assets and evacuation routes, and addressing at-risk highway infrastructure. In general, eligible projects include highway and transit projects, bicycle and pedestrian facilities, and port facilities, including those that help improve evacuations or disaster relief.

Local project applicants receiving funding includes:

County of Los Angeles — $3,178,400: The County of Los Angeles will receive nearly $3.2 million to implement integrated corridor management strategies on and around the Castaic-Santa Clarita Valley section of I-5 to minimize delays during evacuations and improve emergency response times to help save lives. The intelligent transportation components include changeable message signs, sensors, closed-circuit TV cameras, advance traffic controllers and communications that will enable real-time traffic monitoring and operations to support evacuation routes.

Details: To view the release online, click here.