HATS wins $400,000 SS4A grant; sober-ride voucher program paused pending evaluation

Andrew Bomburger and Tri-County staff told the committee the region received $400,000 through the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program, with a $100,000 local match, to support safety planning for five sites identified in the safety action plan.

"We got the funding," Bomburger said. "So we will have a $400,000 grant to be matched against another $100,000 for the local match — a total of $500,000 to address those five sites." He said the grant funds cannot be used for final engineering/design implementation but can be used for analysis, outreach and alternatives work to move projects closer to programming.

Rebecca Winschop summarized the Sober Ride Home demonstration, developed with SS4A demonstration funding to reduce DUI crashes. She said the program initially operated broadly in 2024, recorded extremely high usage (about 14,000 vouchers), then was restructured to operate limited hours on holiday weekends; the program has now exhausted its remaining voucher budget.

"After launching in 2024 and operating for about two weeks, the program was paused following an extremely high usage," Winschop said. She described follow-on analysis with Kittelson & Associates to evaluate program effectiveness compared with 2025 PennDOT crash data (expected around May) and said staff aim to have report drafts by September; the final FHWA report deadline is next September.

Winschop also provided operational statistics from the program materials: the average cost per trip during holiday operations was about $14, average trip duration about 11.5 minutes, and average distance about 5 miles.

Next steps: staff will coordinate the evaluation, wait for 2025 crash data to do comparative analysis, and report findings to the committee in the coming months.