What This List Covers
Every count on this page comes from our own corpus on August 16, 2026, and covers transportation funding that is open now with a stated close date between today and December 31, 2026. Collapsed to one row per solicitation, that is 1,064 contracts and 16 grants. A further 12 postings are technical assistance, requests for information or training, and are counted in neither figure. The filter matters, so here it is plainly. This counts postings with a firm posted deadline. It does not count formula money that flows to states without a competition, which is most federal transportation spending by dollar volume and is not something you apply for. It does not count programs accepting applications with no date attached. And it counts a solicitation once even when it appears on both a state portal and SAM.gov. Two honest limits. First, our transportation net is drawn on title and issuing agency, so a bridge-deck contract issued by a county public works department rather than a DOT can fall outside it, and a small number of non-transportation programs from transportation-adjacent agencies fall inside it. We hand-checked the 20 grant rows the net returned and 4 were off-topic, which is why the grant number on this page is 16 and not 20. We did not hand-check all 1,064 contracts. Second, deadlines move, particularly on state procurement portals, and an addendum can extend a close date without changing the posting. Verify on the official link before you plan around a date. For the program-by-program view of what federal transportation grant programs exist and what they fund, see our federal transportation grants guide. This page answers only the question of what is open and when it shuts.
The Ratio Nobody Publishes: 65 Contracts for Every Grant
Sixteen transportation grants are open with a posted 2026 deadline. One thousand and sixty-four transportation contracts are. That is roughly 66 contracts for every grant, and it is the single most useful fact on this page. Every transportation funding calendar we have read organizes itself around the grant programs: RAISE, Low-No, Buses and Bus Facilities, Safe Streets. Those are real and four of them are on this page. But they are a rounding error in the count of things you can actually bid on this quarter, and they are the most competitive dollars in the sector, because the entire field is pointed at them. The reason for the imbalance is structural rather than seasonal. Federal transportation money mostly reaches the ground as formula funds apportioned to state DOTs and transit agencies, and those agencies then buy things. The competitive grant is the exception; the procurement is the norm. So the addressable pipeline for a firm that builds, paves, inspects, hauls, or writes software for transportation is not the federal grant calendar at all. It is 79 open solicitations at the Virginia Department of Transportation, 67 in California, 42 in Texas, 27 in Pennsylvania, 25 at MTA New York City Transit, 25 in Colorado, and 74 at the Defense Logistics Agency's aviation arm. That is not a consolation prize for organizations that cannot win grants. For most transportation vendors it is the actual market, and the grant calendar is the distraction.
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The Cliff: 97% of It Closes by September 30
Of the 1,064 open contracts, 1,035 close on or before September 30, 2026. Only 29 close after it. And 674, nearly two thirds of them, close on or before August 31. This is the federal fiscal year ending, and it propagates into state and transit-agency procurement because so much of their capital budget is federally sourced and has to be obligated. The practical shape of the next six weeks is a wall, then near-silence. Read the two numbers together and the planning implication is uncomfortable. If you are looking at this in the second half of August, the 674 closing this month are mostly not winnable from a standing start; a Virginia DOT invitation for bid on delivered aggregate is winnable in days, but a request for proposals on a traffic operations center building is not. The 361 that close in September are the live set. And the 29 that close after September 30 are the only things you can prepare properly. So the correct use of the next six weeks is not to chase the wall. It is to bid the handful of September items you are genuinely qualified for, and to spend the rest of the time registered, credentialed, and on the right bidder lists before the new fiscal year opens the next wave in October. Every hour spent in September on registration is an hour that does not have to be spent in October when everything reposts at once.
The 16 Open Transportation Grants, by Close Date
Nine are federal. Seven are state programs. All sixteen, in order: August 25: Public Transportation on Indian Reservations, Tribal Transit FY 2026, Federal Transit Administration. August 28: Rural Transportation Match and Gap Funding Assistance Program, Denali Commission. Award ceiling $1,000,000. This one is unusual and underused: it exists to pay the local match on another grant, which is the exact thing that stops small rural applicants from accepting money they have already won. August 28: Tribal Transportation Safety Strategy Pilot Program, DOT Research and Technology. Award ceiling $2,000,000. August 31: United States Marine Highway Program FY 2026, Maritime Administration. Award ceiling $12,000,000, the largest posted ceiling in this set. September 1: RISE Local Development, September 2026 round, Iowa DOT. September 9: Stopping Threats On Pedestrians competitive grant program, the bollard program, Federal Highway Administration. Award ceiling $5,000,000. September 9: Innovative Coordinated Access and Mobility Pilot Program FY 2026, Federal Transit Administration. September 21: Low or No Emission Program FY 2026, Federal Transit Administration. September 21: Buses and Bus Facilities Program FY 2026, Federal Transit Administration. September 21: Section 5310 Enhanced Mobility of Seniors and Individuals with Disabilities, Illinois DOT competitive vehicle program. September 28: Bus Safety, Accessibility, and Innovation FY 2026, Federal Transit Administration. Award ceiling $10,000,000. September 29: Medium-Duty and Heavy-Duty Zero-Emission Vehicle Grant Program, Maryland Energy Administration. November 2: Local Highway Safety Improvement Program, California DOT. Award ceiling $10,000,000. November 3: Recreational Trails Program, Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office. November 3: Nonhighway and Off-Road Vehicle Activities, Trails, Washington RCO. November 3: Nonhighway and Off-Road Vehicle Activities, Education and Enforcement, Washington RCO. Note the shape. Five of the nine federal grants are Federal Transit Administration bus and transit programs, and four of those five close within eight days of each other in late September. If you are a transit agency, your entire federal grant year is one week long and it starts September 21. Everything after November 3 in this list is empty: our corpus holds no transportation grant with a posted deadline between November 4 and December 31.
Where the Contracts Actually Are
The 1,064 open contracts concentrate in a small number of buyers. The largest by open count: Virginia DOT 79, Defense Logistics Agency aviation 74, the state of California 67, the Department of Defense broadly 58, the US Department of Transportation 43 plus 31 more under a second listing, Texas 42, Pennsylvania 27, MTA New York City Transit 25, Colorado 25, Ohio 20, Mississippi 20. Every single one of Virginia DOT's 79 closes by September 30. So do all 74 at DLA aviation, all 31 at the second DOT listing, all 20 in Ohio and all 20 in Mississippi. The cliff is not a national average, it is nearly universal per-buyer. Five real examples, to show what the work is rather than what the category is called: IFB 161070 Electrical Services, Virginia DOT, closes August 20. RFP 161001 Staunton Traffic Operations Center Building, Verona, Virginia DOT, closes August 20. MTA All-Agency Technology Hardware Managed Services, MTA New York City Transit, closes August 20. Aircraft Parts Audit, US Department of Transportation, closes August 20. Sign Replacement, I-285 counterclockwise ramp to I-75 southbound, Georgia DOT, closes August 20. An electrical services bid, a building, a managed-services contract, an audit, and highway signage. Three of those five have nothing to do with roads as a technical discipline. Managed IT services, auditing and commercial electrical work are transportation contracts here only because a transportation agency is buying them, which means a firm with no transportation experience at all is qualified to bid. That is the part the grant calendar hides completely.
How to Work a Calendar Shaped Like This
Three things follow from the numbers above, and none of them is 'apply to more grants'. First, decide which side of the 65-to-1 ratio you are on, and stop reading the other one. A transit agency or a tribe or a county chasing capital dollars belongs on the grant list, and that list is sixteen items long and mostly closes in late September. A vendor that sells anything to a transportation agency belongs on the contract list, and that list is a thousand items long and it is where the work is. Very few organizations are genuinely on both sides, and trying to be is how small teams spend a quarter producing nothing. Second, treat registration as the deadline. The 674 solicitations closing before September ends are not the opportunity for anyone starting today; the October repost is. What determines whether you can bid in October is whether you are registered on the right portals now, and those are per-buyer: Virginia DOT runs its own eVA vendor system, Georgia runs the Georgia Procurement Registry, New York transit posts through the New York State Contract Reporter, federal work runs through SAM.gov. None of them accepts a same-day registration as a substitute for having been registered. Third, be specific about the buyer, not the sector. 'Transportation funding' is not a market. Virginia DOT with 79 open solicitations closing inside six weeks is a market, and so is DLA aviation with 74. Pick two buyers whose purchases match what you already sell, learn their portals and their cycles, and ignore the rest entirely. If you want the subset that matches what you actually do, without reading eleven state portals and SAM.gov, search the corpus directly and set a watch on the queries that matter to you. Both the grants and the contracts are in there, filterable apart, which is the point.