Grants to Tennessee rural municipalities to improve transportation systems. Funding is intended to create improvements in transportation efficiency, promote economic growth, and assist communities with the planning necessary to achieve cohesiveness between local land use and multimodal transportation systems.

Program Goals:

• Assist rural communities with planning efforts that define the transportation cohesiveness between multimodal transportation systems and local land use objectives that achieve the statewide transportation goals
• Aid with the creation of planning documents that support improvements in traffic flow, safety, and overall efficiency of the transportation system
• Provide governments with planning resources to achieve community visions as related to transportation and land use needs that promote future economic growth

Requirements:

• Establish a dedicated “Steering Committee” of community leaders who will participate for the length of the study. This will involve allocating time for meetings and facilitating community input. The committee will include the RPO Coordinator and a member from your regional OCT staff at TDOT.
• Illustrate interest and support from local government officials as well as other traditional and non-traditional partners within the project area who recognize the need and importance of the planning effort to their community.
• Adopt a resolution (or a letter of support from the mayor or county executive) by the participating jurisdiction(s) to implement, to the best of their ability, recommendations from the study. In addition, identify your up-front support of the required 10% match.
• Clearly identify the goals of the plan and how your community will use it moving forward.

Eligible Activities:

• Transportation plans that include analysis to determine multimodal transportation needs to increase the accessibility, mobility, and safety of people and freight, such as active transportation plans, safety focused plans (motorized and non-motorized), rural freight studies, and community mobility plans.
• Transportation planning activities to better coordinate transportation and land-use decisions, including corridor studies and school siting/industrial-commercial siting.
• Transportation planning activities to support a Corridor Management Agreement (already existing or not).
• Transportation plans to enhance the integration and connectivity of the transportation system, such as a Transportation Systems Management & Operations (TSMO) study, a smart mobility plan, or a transportation resilience or transportation sustainability plan.
• Bicycle and pedestrian Plans, corridor studies, and resurfacing design plans.
• Other innovative transportation-related planning projects and activities that are consistent with both the RPO and the State of Tennessee’s transportation goals.