Tribal Transportation

Grant Programs

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) performs its mission of creating the best transportation system in the world for the American people through proactive leadership, innovation, and excellence in service through the following principal programs:

Federal-Aid Highway Program

The Federal-Aid Highway Program is a federally assisted State program. The State Highway Agency (SHA) is the recipient of Federal funds and is also responsible for administering the Program. The role of the FHWA is to administer the Federal-aid program in partnership with the SHA. The FHWA provides Federal financial assistance to the States to construct and improve the National Highway System (NHS), urban and rural roads, and bridges. Each of the fifty-two operating division offices (one in each State, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) is located in the same city as the SHA. These division offices provide front line Federal-aid program delivery assistance to partners and customers in highway transportation and safety services - including but not limited to - planning and research, preliminary engineering, technology transfer, right-of-way, bridge, highway safety, traffic operations, environment, civil rights, design construction and maintenance, engineering coordination, highway beautification, and administration.

Federal Lands Highway Program

The Federal Lands Highway Program (FLHP) is administered by FHWA. Responsibilities of the FLHP include survey, design and construction of forest highway system roads, parkways and park roads, Indian reservation roads, defense access roads, and other Federal lands roads. The FLHP office provides funding for more than 90,000 miles of federally owned and public authority-owned roads. The FLHP office also provides program coordination, administration and design, and construction engineering assistance and directs the conduct of transportation planning and engineering studies.

Indian Reservation Roads

The Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) Program is one of the funding categories under the FLHP. The IRR are defined as any public road on an Indian reservation, Indian trust land, restricted Indian land, or Alaska Native Villages. In States where tribes do not have reservations, public roads that serve Indian communities, and/or are primarily used by tribal members, may be designated as IRR. The FLHP's, IRR Program is jointly administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FHWA through an interagency agreement.

Research Activities

Office of Planning, Transportation Planning Cooperative Research Broad Agency Announcement

The FHWA is soliciting for proposals for research and development projects that could lead to transformational changes and revolutionary advances for transportation planning in the United States. The objective of this BAA is to advance the practice and application of transportation planning among state, regional, local, and tribal transportation planning agencies in response to significant changes in the planning process and to identify new tools, techniques and approaches that respond to national transportation planning priorities. For Tribal transportation planning, the objective of the coordinated research approach will be the development of innovative tools or approaches that will promote the integration of tribal issues into the transportation planning and programming processes at the State and metropolitan levels. Examples of research could include development of "Information Tools" for use by Tribal departments of transportation demonstrating effective consultation practices in the statewide and metropolitan transportation planning process. Tribal transportation planning research also could focus on innovative planning techniques to assist tribes in maintaining their transportation system and could define novel processes that would help Tribal Transportation Agencies more effectively utilize tools and technology even with limited resources.