North Carolina Opens 2026 Multimodal Grants for Safer Bike and Pedestrian Plans

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has opened applications for its 2026 Multimodal Planning Program. This initiative provides matching grants to 278 municipalities statewide. Towns can use the money to build bicycle and pedestrian transportation plans.

The program started in 2004. It helps local governments transform priorities into data-driven, fundable projects. These projects support bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

Eric Zaverl works as the Urban Design Specialist with Sustain Charlotte. More than a dozen incidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists have happened on Charlotte city streets so far this year, he said.

"We've lost 13 people so far, and one of them being Lance Sotelo — he was just out for a run and lost his life, and there's just a wide range of people who have lost their lives from, I think it was a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old, 20s to their 60s," Zaverl said, according to WCNC.

Car dependency creates safety problems, Zaverl said. "We are heavily dependent upon one mode in the U.S., and that is by cars. And when you don't have a backup plan, and you're heavily dependent on one thing, it creates the problems that we're seeing today," he said.

State transportation officials lack tools to address pedestrian and cyclist safety, he believes. "When state DOT doesn't have any other tools in their toolbox besides building highways, they don't know what else to do when they're confronted with this particular problem," Zaverl said.

The funding opportunity helps smaller communities. Many lack tax revenue for bike and pedestrian projects. "I think it's a great fit for the places that don't even have a tax revenue, locally, to be able to devote any money towards these bike-ped projects," he added.

Charlotte needs to change its approach as it grows, Zaverl stressed. "Doing the same of what we've been doing is not working. And things are — we're growing, and when you have all that, you can't keep doing the same thing you've been doing and expecting it to change things," he said.

Applications are open now for the 2026 program.