Atlanta Regional Commission receives $1.5M grant for climate resilient infrastructure

April 24th, 2024

A truck makes waves down a flooded road near Highway 122 Sunday Jan. 22, 2017 near Barney, Ga. (AP Photo/Phil Sears)

The Federal Highway Administration is doling out millions of dollars for municipalities to make infrastructure like roads and bridges more prepared for the future.

On Friday, April 19, The Atlanta Regional Commission received $1.5 million through the FHA’s PROTECT Grant to develop a regional Resilience Improvement Plan.

Danny Johnson, managing director of the Natural Resources Department at the Commission, said land use has changed river flows and heights, and storms continue to become more intense and bring more rain. This all adds up to challenges for transportation infrastructure crucial to everything from getting around town to local economies.

“Most of the time, the design standards for these bridges and these crossings are using data from storm intensities from the past,” Johnson said.

The Metro Atlanta area hasn’t done an update or analysis like this in a long time, and Johnson said the grant will fund that kind of research to ensure that new built infrastructure is ready for climate impacts and older infrastructure can be prepared for updates.

“And what our work will do is incorporate new forecast models to assess what the likelihood might be in the year 2040, for instance, of the bridge or some crossings getting inundated with higher intensity storms,” Johnson said.

But the ARC isn’t just worried about flooding. They’ll also be looking into how heat impacts transportation users, like folks waiting for the bus or train, and infrastructure, like roads and train rails, that can be impacted by extreme temperatures.

The project is slated to begin in 2025 and will last 18 months and engage with local governments, community partners and the public through an extensive public engagement process. At the end the commission will identify short and long term investments to build climate resilience in the 20-county ARC region.