Northeastern State DOT Projects Win Regional Awards

July 26, 2024

Eight projects from state departments of transportation in Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey won top prizes in the 2024 America’s Transportation Awards competition.

[Above image by AASHTO]

Those projects, ranging from employing new safety measures to save lives to investing in customer-focused transit, were recognized for making positive changes in their communities. The video highlights those project attributes:

Selected from 22 projects nominated by seven state DOTs in the Northeastern Association of State Transportation Officials or NASTO region, they are among 106 nominations submitted by 39 state DOTs as part of the annual America’s Transportation Awards contest.

Sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, AAA, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the America’s Transportation Awards competition highlights state DOT projects and their impact on the communities in which they reside.

[Editor’s note: Below is video highlighting the two winners of the 2023 America’s Transportation Awards contest. The Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Transit Authority took home the competition’s Grand Prize for their “Teamed Up for Transit” project, while the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s Lamoille Valley Rail Trail won the People’s Choice Award.]

Projects are nominated in four categories: Quality of Life/Community Development; Operations Excellence; Best Use of Technology & Innovation; and Safety.

They showcase transportation’s crucial role for every person in every community—regardless of how they travel. In response to rising level of fatalities on our nation’s roadways over the last several years, 2024 marks the inaugural year of the Safety category, celebrating projects that successfully addressed safety challenges.

“The America’s Transportation Awards competition highlights the critical role state DOTs play in improving safety, enhancing mobility, and improving quality of life for their communities,” said AASHTO Executive Director Jim Tymon in a statement.

“Our new safety category, implemented as part of AASHTO President Craig Thompson’s emphasis areas, allows us one more avenue to learn from each other on ways to drive down fatalities and serious crashes across the country,” he noted. “These winning NASTO region projects showcased the very best solutions to transportation challenges, whether they be finding ways to improve transit service for communities, restoring traffic after emergencies, or implementing engineering changes in neighborhoods to make all road users safer.”

All nominated projects first compete at the regional level against projects of their own size: “Small” (projects costing up to $10 million), “Medium” (projects costing between $10 million and $100 million), and “Large” (projects costing more than $100 million).

The 2024 winning NASTO regional projects are:

Once the regional competitions are completed, the “Top 12” nationwide finalists in the 2024 America’s Transportation Awards contest will be announced in early September; a list comprised of the three highest-scoring projects from each region.

The top 12 contenders will then compete for the two 2024 America’s Transportation Awards national prizes. The Grand Prize will be selected by an independent panel of judges, while the People’s Choice Award will go to the project with the most online votes from the public, weighted by state population. AASHTO will announce the winners at its annual meeting in October 2024 in Philadelphia.

Both winners will receive $10,000 each for a charity or transportation-related scholarship of their choosing.

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