The fourth year of grant awards for the popular Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program were announced on December 23, 2025. The 2025 round is the first round of awards administered by the Trump administration after Congress created the SS4A program in 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Most discretionary grant programs, like SS4A, see each administration put their own emphasis on grant priorities.
Throughout 2025, the Trump administration took several actions to change the SS4A program:
- It reduced the number of application deadlines from three to one;
- It issued a memo and reviewed grants based on certain elements, including whether the primary purpose of activities was to create bicycle infrastructure;
- It issued an order outlining priorities in grant consideration, with families as one priority consideration; and
- In the notice of funding opportunity there were several new and revised criteria, such as replacing consideration of historically disadvantaged communities with consideration of areas of persistent poverty.
Though awards have now been announced, we still don’t have all the data to say how these changes impacted SS4A grant considerations and awards. But, we can use the data we have to provide some insight on how the program’s priorities have changed under the Trump administration.
One thing is clear, reducing applications to a single deadline did not diminish the popularity of this program, with many more requests for funding submitted than could be funded and more funds awarded than in either of the first two years of the program. In rejection letters to applicants, the administration stated that 75% of applications could not be funded given available funding – showing the tremendous interest and need in safety investments.
A clear change in the projects receiving awards is that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)’s Proven Safety Countermeasures were referenced in almost a third of project descriptions in 2025, after being referenced in no more than 3% of winning project descriptions in any prior round. Proven Safety Countermeasures is an initiative within FHWA that promotes 28 countermeasures and strategies with research-backed effectiveness for reducing fatalities and serious injuries.
Awarded project descriptions also show that worst-case scenarios for vulnerable road user safety did not come to pass. Despite the administration’s review of prior grants for bicycle infrastructure, a slightly higher percentage of approved project descriptions included bike or bicycle than in previous grant rounds. Pedestrians and walk-related terms also appeared in a higher percentage of project descriptions. Terms like “Vision Zero” and “Safe System Approach” also saw increased usage consistent with trends that occurred under the previous administration.
However, several terms showed the effect of different priorities by the Trump administration. Terms like “equity” and “road diet” which have been prominently attacked in administration communications did not appear in any funded project descriptions. Terms related to post-crash care saw an increase, with “emergency” found in 10% of project descriptions after not being in more than 2% in any prior round.
It’s a bit harder to tell how the administration’s project selection priorities related to issues like marriage and birth rates have impacted project selection. The overall number of grants and funding amounts was down from 2024 because 2024 used leftover funds from 2022 and 2023. This means that most states saw a decrease in grants and grant amounts, but there are still clear changes in the share of funding received by each state.
If you’re looking for evidence that high marriage and birth rates impacted grants, then the increase in grants to core middle American states running from North Dakota to Oklahoma could be seen as good evidence of the impact of that priority. However, some neighboring states with higher marriage and birth rates, like Minnesota, saw a smaller share of funding. Many southern states, which often have higher birth rates, but lower marriage rates saw a larger share of funding. However, Texas saw a lower share of funding despite generally having higher marriage and birth rates than southern states. These differences might be explained by more local data, but further analysis will be needed to see what, if any, impact that priority has had.
The SS4A program remains one of the best sources of federal funding for safety projects and planning. It is one of very few discretionary grant programs that communities can directly apply for funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation. As communities look forward to its last round under the authorization given by Congress in 2021, we hope that this trend analysis can help create successful applications and better projects.