City of Erie announces $20 million federal Safe Streets grant to implement safety action plan

City of Erie planning staff told the Historic Review Commission on Jan. 5 that the city received a $20,000,000 Safe Streets and Roads for All implementation grant from the Federal Highway Administration.

A planning department speaker said the award follows completion of the city’s safety action plan and will fund both a planning component and spot-specific construction projects focused on high-injury corridors. The staff member described a roughly five-year timeline for project delivery and said consultants will be engaged to recommend priority sites where the money should be spent.

“...we were awarded a $20,000,000 safe streets and roads for all grant from the Federal Highway Administration,” the planning department staff said. The staff noted the grant is split into planning and construction phases and said the planning phase will inform where the construction investments should be targeted.

Staff warned that some projects can become costly when infrastructure such as sewer lines must be moved, but said the award creates an important funding stream to pave sidewalks, improve intersections and address locations identified in the city’s high-injury network. Staff said some of the crash data underlying the plan date to February 2023 and that the city experienced several pedestrian fatalities in 2024, which prompted updates to the planning work.

The speaker said the Commonwealth received $28,000,000 total and that the city received $20,000,000 of that allocation. The transcript contains inconsistent or unclear breakdowns of planning vs. construction dollars; the planning department did reference planning and construction components but did not provide a clear, single breakdown in the meeting remarks. Officials said they will return with more details as the scope is finalized.

No formal action was taken by the Historic Review Commission on the grant itself at the Jan. 5 session.