The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) Grant program offers planning grants and Competitive Resilience Improvement Grants to eligible entities. The program’s purpose is to support transportation that is resilient against natural hazards. It is open to projects from various modes of transportation. Apply by 8/18/2023. Learn more here.

Eligible uses include highway, transit, and certain port projects that include resilience planning, strengthening and protecting evacuation routes, enabling communities to address vulnerabilities and increasing the resilience of surface transportation infrastructure from the impacts of sea level rise, flooding, wildfires, extreme weather events, and other natural disasters. 

Eligible applicants include states (or a political subdivision of a state), metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), local governments, special purpose districts or public authorities with a transportation function, Tribal governments, and federal land management agencies (FLMAs), when applying jointly with states. Different eligibilities apply for at-risk coastal infrastructure grants.

Agencies applying for resilient transportation projects through PROTECT will need to complete a Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA). Both the BCA portion of an application and the development of a project concept might benefit from using Planning and Environmental Linkages, or PEL, to consider potential environmental impacts of transportation early in the planning process.

Click here to find FHWA information and resources on PEL. In addition, find the NADO Research Foundation’s issue briefs on rural PEL practices here.