Anyone who has driven on roads in rural Pennsylvania knows that transportation grants could make things a lot smoother.

However, a study released last month by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania showed rural areas are less likely to apply for transportation grants and have more of a challenge than their urban counterparts in coming up with matching funds.

“The top two transformation funding needs of rural and urban municipalities are identical: road and bridge maintenance and stormwater improvement,” the center’s report indicated.

Surveying 469 rural communities, it was learned that 89% said the top need was road and bridge maintenance, followed by stormwater improvements at 68% and road and bridge construction as the third, at 40%. Traffic operations were identified by 28%, while 23% identified pedestrian and sidewalk improvements.

The top two funding sources identified were liquid fuels allocations by 96% of rural participants, and local tax or fees revenue, by 56% percent. Also mentioned were Marcellus shale fees at 34%, state road turnback allocation at 31%, other federal or state non-transportation funding at 17%, and competitive transportation grants at 14%.

“It should be noted that rural municipalities are less likely to receive competitive grant funding than urban municipalities,” the center’s report stated. “One of the indicators of whether a municipality received competitive grant funding is the number of full-time employees. Rural municipalities that use competitive grant funding have an average of 14.6 full-time employees, while those who do not, have an average of 3.5 full-time employees.”

The center’s survey also asked municipalities what factors prevented them from applying for federal and state transportation grants.

“According to survey results, the top two reasons that limit or prevent rural and urban municipalities from applying for federal and state transportation grants are: inability to fund the local match and limited staff capacity/expertise to complete applications.”

For rural municipalities, the top factor, as named by 62% of participants, was inability to fund the local match, followed by 60% who responded that they had limited staff or expertise to complete the applications, 43% who said other local priorities took precedence and 41% said they did not know about the funding opportunity.

The survey also asked if municipalities had challenges in providing a local match for transportation grants and if technical assistance was needed. Both answers were overwhelmingly yes.

“Results of this survey suggest that there is a sizable number of rural and urban municipalities that have difficulty accessing federal and state transportation grants,” the center’s report noted. “These difficulties or challenges seem to fall into three broad categories: Not knowing about the grant programs; difficulty filling out the grant application; and difficulties meeting the local financial match requirement.

“One factor that was common to all municipalities with these challenges was municipal staffing,” the center’s report continued. “Municipalities (rural and urban) with fewer than four full-time staff had more challenges than those municipalities with more staff. Statewide, 51 percent of the state’s 2,560 municipalities have fewer than four employees.

“Hiring more municipal staff is not a financial option for most municipalities. Therefore, better methods of assisting municipalities may need to be explored.”