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If you are a local or state government, you can start readying your application for the latest round of federal money for transportation projects. TIGER, or Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, is a program now shelling out money for a third time.

Exciting, right? Um, yeah. Actually pretty much every municipality in Oregon has some pipe-dream life-changing transportation project that this money would almost make totally doable.

How much money are we talking about? About $527 million, ranging from $10 million to $200 million for each recipient. Applications will begin being accepted Aug. 22 and will close Oct. 3.

In previously incarnations of the grant, TIGER I and TIGER II, both of which worked a little bit differently, Oregon received some money, and you can safely assume more money will be coming this way this time. The Oregon Department of Transportation plans to apply, though it hasn’t decided which projects it wants to submit.

Applicants should be smart about choosing projects because these grants are discretionary, meaning the winner doesn’t win by a system of points but rather by which project just screams “I’m the best!” Critics say this isn’t fair and that it encourages a lot of political maneuvering. So ODOT, to be safe, you better give your buddy Ray LaHood a call.

But if precedence is any help, here are the past Oregon winners.

• In the first round, TIGER I, the Portland Bureau of Transportation and TriMet received $23 million for the , a $77.6 million project to rebuild three roads and make transit improvements.
• In the second round, two grants were awarded. A project to place electric vehicle charging stations along  Interstate 5 got $2 million, and a Coos Bay freight-rail line got $13.5 million.

So fingers crossed, and good luck to us all. Oh, and for more info, read the from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

-Aaron Spencer

Photo courtesy of via Flickr