Eligible Projects

Eligible Projects 

Eligible projects for funding are located on or along a current or legacy state highway located in a high equity need community. The program has identified four types of projects to support connectivity and environmental justice. 

Project Phases 

The SWCCP can fund any project phase: planning, design or construction. Projects include but are not limited to active transportation planning studies, sidewalks, shared-use paths, Complete Streets, community engagement and neighborhood greenways. There are four focus areas for the grant program. 

• Planning: Funding for equitable, community-centered transportation planning focused on restoring community connectivity, public engagement, and developing local policies to prevent displacement. Reducing the cost of transportation can increase access to transportation for low-income residents and support economic growth and opportunity. 

• Design: Funding for design alternates early in the process, and work on a final design. This can include preliminary engineering, and demonstration or quick-build projects that can iterate project design ideas with community guidance, input, and evaluation. 

• Construction: Funding for projects that are “shovel ready”. These construction funds can be used to build Complete Streets to restore or improve community connectivity; remedy physical barriers that divide communities from employment, education, and opportunity; and address facilities burdening local communities from an environmental justice perspective.  

• Project Examples 

• Constructing pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalks and crossing treatments that are accessible to people using wheelchairs or strollers, and that reduce the chance of traffic collisions.  

• Engaging with residents who are often excluded from transportation planning, in order to codevelop solutions that fill active transportation gaps and meet community needs.  

• Developing relationships with trusted community advocates, to help allay mistrust that marginalized community residents may feel in order to support marginalized community residents to become more involved in the public process.  

• Planning and designing for roadway reallocation and incorporating Complete Streets design elements into construction projects. 

• Installing pedestrian lighting to provide safer, more comfortable facilities for all users, where people regardless of gender or racial identity feel safe.  

• Installing a quick-build project in collaboration with community partners. This project can slow driving speeds, improve crossing visibility, and incorporate art that celebrates the community’s culture(s) in preparation for more permanent installations. 

Community Engagement 

The goal of the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities Grant Program is to better understand community members' barriers and opportunities along current and former state routes, focusing on those communities that are environmentally overburdened and living with historic disinvestment, and address those needs through a community-centered process.  

 How can this be achieved? 

• By stepping back: Providing space and time for relationships to develop and keeping the outcomes centered on the community's identified needs along the corridor. 

•  By asking questions: What makes it challenging to travel and move from place to place by walking, biking, rolling, or accessing transit? What is important to you? How can we help? 

• Bringing community into the process: Working with local community-based organizations and providing contracting opportunities for Women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) owned businesses. Planning, engineering, community engagement, food, translation, photography, and printing are potential opportunities to bring in the local community. Another way is to provide Community Compensation for local expertise during focus groups or one-on-one interviews. 

• Designing multiple opportunities for engagement that move beyond informing to dignity and understanding the values of the communities. Identify and communicate how public input will inform the plans or design. 

The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership, developed by Rosa Gonzalez, is a helpful tool to engage in a constructive conversation about what’s possible, address gaps, unlock opportunities, and redirect our civic processes intentionally towards deep mutual engagement, equity and accessibility, and community ownership.  SWCCP encourages Applicants to develop and implement outreach and engagement that aligns with levels 4 and 5 (Collaborate and Defer To, respectively), both during application development and project implementation. There may be instances where applying a different level on the spectrum is more appropriate. In those instances, applicants should be clear with community members about what the goals of the engagement are, and what this approach will mean for members’ involvement. Applicants should be receptive to feedback from community members on the approach they have chosen to take. 

Examples of ways to move toward community collaboration and ownership: 

• Developing a community advisory council to co-lead the process for the project, ensuring the council as a voice throughout the project process 

• Developing a community-led participatory action research to guide the planning for transportation investments in a historically disinvested area.