Grant money intended to boost Lowcountry transportation

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The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority and Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments will receive more than $1.2 in cumulative grant funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

The transportation authority will receive $563,000 in grant funding to develop a downtown restoration plan to improve post-pandemic ridership and service quality, while the council will receive $650,000 to study fixed route and bus rapid transit alternatives for the U.S. Highway 52 corridor, which connects the Goose Creek and Moncks Corner communities in Berkeley County, according to a news release. 

The objective of the study is to identify alignments, station locations and guideway features based on criteria related to increased ridership, equitable access, cost-effectiveness, engineering and safety features, environmental impacts, and more.

“This recent announcement from the Federal Transit Administration is great news for residents throughout the tri-county area,” Ron Mitchum, executive director of the council, said in the news release. “With communities across the country still recovering from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this funding will go a long way toward improving our local transportation infrastructure and maintaining the kind of high quality of service our riders deserve. I’d like to thank our partners at the Federal Transit Administration for including CARTA and BCDCOG in this grant distribution and look forward to getting started.”

The funding is part of a $25 million grant distribution intended to help 50 public transportation agencies across the country restore service that was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.