Featured Article: Emergency Relief for Disaster Damaged Roads and Bridges(April 8th, 2024)

Congressional Communities is featuring one Congressional Research Service (CRS) article per day in effort to share with our readers the wealth of information that the CRS makes readily available.

Today’s featured CRS article, “Emergency Relief Program for Disaster-Damaged Highways and Bridges,” discusses the federal emergency relief administered to disaster damaged roads and bridges. This article falls under the issue area of Emergency Management. From the CRS:

At about 1:30 a.m. on March 26, 2024, the MV Dali, a container ship departing the Port of Baltimore, struck a support tower of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD, causing the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River. The bridge is a segment of Interstate 695, part of the National Highway System, and a federal-aid highway. The bridge collapse has called attention to federal transportation programs that provide emergency relief (ER) to communities in the wake of disasters. This report provides an overview of the ER Program administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). […]

Disaster-damaged roads that are federal-aid highways are eligible for federal assistance under the ER Program. Federal-aid highways make up about 25% of all public roads in the United States but exclude roads classified as local roads or rural minor collectors. Disaster-damaged public roads that are not federal-aid highways may be eligible for disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Public Assistance Program and are not discussed in this report. […]

This report begins by discussing FHWA assistance for the repair and reconstruction of highways and bridges damaged by disasters (such as hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires) or catastrophic failures (such as the I-95 bridge collapse of June 11, 2023, in Philadelphia). The report includes information on the use of ER funds on disaster-damaged federally owned public use roadways, such as National Park Service roads and U.S. Forest Service roads, under the affiliated Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads (ERFO) program.

Interested readers can find the full article here.