Tea receives $8.7 million federal grant for Highway 106

The City of Tea received a grant that is aimed at improving the ever growing city’s infrastructure. The US Department of Transportation decided to award the City of Tea’s Highway 106 project $8,702,731. This funding was done under the BUILD (Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development) program, which is used for critical infrastructure funding and support for road, rail, transit, and port infrastructure projects across the country.

The grant came as a part of a nationwide announcement of grants given to locations across the country. U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao announced a total $1.5 billion in discretionary grant funding to 91 total projects in 49 states and the District of Columbia.

According to the US Department of Transportation, 851 total project applications for the program were evaluated by a team of 222 staff in the DOT and selected based on established criteria such as safety, economic competitiveness,

quality of life, environmental protection, and state of good repair.

The US DOT stated that applicants this year requested more than $10.9 billion in funding through the program

US secretary Chao stated, “BUILD transportation grants are major investments in road, rail, transit, and port projects that serve as a down payment on this administration’s commitment to America’s infrastructure.”

The selected Highway 106 project is a construction plan to improve the route and to open it up to greater commerce opportunities, while increasing safety. The route, also known as 271st Street, goes from I-29 to 469th Avenue. This is one of Tea’s main thoroughfares. Highway 106 is stated to have a large volume of vehicle traffic each day, which makes for unsafe driving conditions due to the fact that the road is still a rural-style, two-lane highway.

The Highway 106 plan is to convert it to a four-lane divided highway with limited access for safety. The plan is to widen and reconstruct approximately 1.3 miles of roadway from the Heritage Parkway intersection to I-29.

(Photo by Michael Bauman)