The Detroit News reports Detroit’s $137 million Woodward Avenue streetcar project faces a $12 million funding shortfall, and Michigan members of Congress warn the project could be in jeopardy unless the Transportation Department gives it more money.
David Shepardson and Leonard Fleming obtained a two-page letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx that warns that the project urgently needs additional grant money to proceed. But even without federal funds, officials of the so-called M-1 project says it would survive — but concede it might have to be scaled back.
The May 1 letter, which has not previously been made public, discloses that Detroit applied for a supplemental $12.2 million grant from the Transportation Department’s TIGER grant program. The project received $25 million in federal funds from the program in January 2013.
“Without the requested $12.2 million TIGER grant, this important project will be delayed indefinitely, and we fear the resulting costs could make the project unaffordable,” said the letter, signed by Sens. Carl Levin of Detroit, Debbie Stabenow of Lansing and Reps. Sander Levin of Royal Oak, John Dingell of Dearborn, John Conyers of Detroit and Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township. The lawmakers, all Democrats, urged Foxx to “award a TIGER grant to close the funding gap.”
TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery. It is a discretionary grant program enabling the transportation department “to invest in road, rail, transit and port projects that promise to achieve critical national objectives,” its website says.
