U.S. Department of Transportation: High Priority – Commercial Motor Vehicle Program

The Commercial Motor Vehicle (HP-CMV) Program will support entities to support the HP-CMV program activities. As the lead government agency responsible for the regulation and safety oversight of commercial motor vehicles (CMV), the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) may award HP-CMV funds to support innovative and impactful projects that advance its mission to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses.

HP-CMV projects include the augmentation of projects funded by the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP), as well as projects related to Performance and Registration Information Systems Management (PRISM) and State Safety Data Quality (SSDQ).

The HP-CMV grant program prioritizes projects that augment motor carrier safety initiatives, and enhance efforts proposed in the MCSAP agency’s Commercial Vehicle Safety Plan (CVSP). The goal is to enable recipients to carry out projects that improve safety and compliance with FMCSA’s regulations. Funding is also available for projects that are national in scope, increase public awareness and education, demonstrate new technologies, and reduce the number of CMV crashes. Below are descriptions of the programmatic activities listed in order of priority.

• Inspection Modernization Project at FMCSA Headquarters. The FMCSA will reserve up to $300,000 to allow one State employee to participate in a project at FMCSA’s State Programs Division in Washington, DC. This project will improve the national CMV enforcement program by providing State perspectives to the implementation of FMCSA’s Integrated Inspection Management System (IIMS) and related inspection modernization efforts. Thus, the purpose of this project is to directly benefit State and local CMV safety agencies and further the intent of the HP-CMV program.
• Performance and Registration Information Systems Management (PRISM). HP CMV funding for PRISM projects is prioritized to deploy and maintain safety mechanisms that link FMCSA information systems with States’ CMV registration information systems to identify and immobilize motor carriers with serious safety violations or that are prohibited from operating by FMCSA through the issuance of a Federal Out-of-Service (OOS) order, and hold them accountable through registration and law enforcement sanctions.
• State Safety Data Quality. The FMCSA’s data-driven safety programs use State-reported data from crashes and inspections to prioritize resources for the greatest impact on large truck and bus safety. The FMCSA SSDQ program focuses on maintaining high quality data from State partners. Data quality is monitored through a set of SSDQ performance measures that assess the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and consistency of State-reported crash and inspection records in MCMIS. Each month, States receive overall State ratings of “good,” “fair,” or “poor” based on eight SSDQ performance measures and one indicator.
• Enforcement of Safe CMV Operation and Compliance with Safety Regulations. Activities under this priority may include: 1) Targeting unsafe driving of CMVs and non-CMVs in areas identified as high-risk crash corridors; 2) Improvements for the safe transportation of goods and persons in foreign commerce; and 3) Improving CMV safety and compliance with CMV safety.
• Technologies to Improve CMV Safety. Funding supports the demonstration of innovative methods for technologies to improve CMV safety enforcement. Applications must be supported by data justifying the need to identify, develop, maintain, and/or implement new and/or existing technologies to improve CMV enforcement techniques. Examples include, but are not limited to, implementation of FMCSA’s electronic logging device requirements and the purchase of License Plate/US DOT readers to augment enforcement efforts.
• CMV safety on Rural Roads. Funds will support projects targeting the safe operation of CMVs and enforcement of federal regulations in rural areas.
• Public Awareness and Education. This priority supports projects that provide information on a variety of traffic safety issues related to CMVs and non-CMVs operating around large trucks and buses. Applicants must describe the type of projects they plan to conduct, including but not limited to passenger transportation, hazardous materials transportation, and share the road safely initiatives, including the number of personnel and the level of effort that will be part of this effort.

Amount: A total of $23,340,000 is available to make up approximately 60 awards with a limit of up to $2,000,000 per priority area. FMCSA will reimburse application from 85%-100% of funds expended per priority area. See solicitation for more details.

Eligibility: States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands; local government (including county, city, township, and special district), and Federally-recognized Native American tribal governments; institutions of higher education; and nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service. See solicitation for eligibility guidelines per priority area.

Link: https://www.grantsolutions.gov/gs/preaward/previewPublicAnnouncement.do?id=63335

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