Tulsa denied federal grant for River Parks street project

Source: Tulsa World, Okla.迷你倉Sept. 06--The city of Tulsa will not be receiving a $14.8 million federal TIGER grant it applied for earlier this year to help fund proposed improvements to Riverside Drive, city officials learned Thursday.The city hoped to use the grant to help pay for $40.1 million in improvements along Riverside Drive from 24th Street to 33rd Place in conjunction with A Gathering Place for Tulsa, which envisions a large park on the east side of Riverside Drive and significant changes to River Parks on the west side. The area will be linked by two land bridges.Thursday's announcement does not mean that road work will not happen.Funding for the work has been included in the city's proposed $918.7 million capital improvements package set to go to voters Nov. 12."It would have been great to get the funding," said Paul Zachary, director of the city's Engineering Services Department."That was $14.8 million out of the $19 million that is in the sales-tax package that could have been freed up for other projects or just not spent."But as far as our (capital improvement) funding package, we are not going to have to scramble."The proposed work along Riverside Drive includes widening the lanes and adding a tree-lined median.The project would also remove the dip and straighten the curve along Riverside Drive near the pedestrian bridge north of 31st Street.Plans also call for raising the bridge at Crow Creek enough to allow for the construction of a pedestrian and bicycle underpass.TIGER -- or Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery -- grants are awarded annually for transportation projects nationwide.James Wagner, transportation projects coordinator for the Indian Nations Council of Governments, s儲存倉id the grant process was highly competitive."This year 568 applications were submitted, and only 52 projects were funded," he said."There were more than $9 billion in requests for funding and only $474 million available. It appeared that a majority of the funding went to public transportation projects, freight rail and port projects."Among the projects selected for funding was Oklahoma City's Intermodal Transportation Hub, which received $13.6 million.As part of the 2008 Fix Our Streets package, Tulsans approved $4.7 million in improvements along Riverside Drive between 31st and 41st streets and another $2.8 million to upgrade the Crow Creek bridge.Those improvements have been put on hold as city officials work with the Kaiser Foundation -- which is paying most of the cost to construct the park -- to coordinate the city's infrastructure needs with those of the park.The city's TIGER grant application stated that other funding for the project will come from the following sources: $4.2 million in 2008 Fix Our Streets sales-tax revenue; $1.1 million from the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority; and $20 million from the Kaiser Foundation.Zachary has said previously that the $4.2 million in 2008 Fix Our Streets funding and the $14.8 million TIGER grant would cover the city's $19 million roadwork portion of the project.Now the grant funding will not be an option. But as City Councilor G.T. Bynum noted Thursday, when preparing the capital improvements package, "We budgeted for the worst-case scenario, thankfully."Kevin Canfield 918-581-8313kevin.canfield@tulsaworld.comCopyright: ___ (c)2013 Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) Visit Tulsa World (Tulsa, Okla.) at .tulsaworld.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉價錢