Foley, Ala. — The city of Foley has just been awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the award on Thursday, Sept. 5.

That award is a $4,728,507 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) 2013 grant designated for the city to use for its transportation regional infrastructure pedestrian system.

The city of Foley is the only municipality in Alabama to receive the award and one of 52 municipalities in 37 states to do so.

“We learned this morning that there were $9 billion applied for and only $474 million awarded,” Foley Mayor John Koniar said Friday, Sept. 6. “That’s very impressive.”

“It’s a really big honor for our city,” Foley City Councilman Ralph Hellmich added. “We may be the smallest entity that got a grant.”

According to Foxx, the highly competitive TIGER program offers one of the only federal funding possibilities for large, multi-modal projects that often are not suitable for other federal funding sources. These federal funds leverage money from private sector partners, states, local governments, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies. The 2013 TIGER round alone supports $1.8 billion in overall project investments.

“These transformational TIGER projects are the best argument for investment in our transportation infrastructure,” Foxx said. “Residents living in our nation’s rural communities need and deserve an affordable, reliable way to travel, and we are committed to ensuring that everyone – regardless of where in our country they live – has access to transportation they need to get ahead in the 21st century economy.”

According to Koniar, the grant will fund the improvement and addition of 29 miles of sidewalks and biking trails in Foley.

“The biggest project will be to put a pedestrian bridge over (Alabama Highway) 59,” he said. “That’s a $750,000 project.”

Hellmich said that’s one project the city has wanted to do for the last 20 years.

The councilman explained pointed out that work on the infrastructure should begin in the next few months. But first the city has to go through the process of accepting the grant.

“But we already have the concept laid out,” Hellmich said of the city’s sidewalk and biking trail improvement project. “We created that master plan with Volkert two or three years ago.”

Work on the improvements is tentatively anticipated to begin in 2014.