The city of Birmingham has been awarded a nearly $22 million federal grant to create a new urban trail to connect downtown to historic neighborhoods just west of the city center.

The $21.6 million grant from the United States Department of Transportation will support the development of the Birmingham Urban Trail and Multimodal Corridor. The corridor is a 2.5-mile trail that will run through the Civil Rights District downtown, the Smithfield neighborhood and surrounding communities headed west.

The funding will pay for a two-way cycle track, improved ADA access, sidewalks, and additional design elements.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell celebrated the grant in a tweet Thursday from her official account.

“Woohoo!!! We just found out that Birmingham will receive $21.6 million to support the Birmingham Urban Trail! I know this grant will help make our city more walkable, bikeable, and livable.”

Sewell described the grant as a “transformational investment.”

“It will be the spine of a growing multimodal transportation network, providing safe and equitable options via an urban trail and complete streets and creating a more walkable, bikeable, safe, connected, and livable community,” she said in a statement.

The RAISE Grant program is designed to fund road, rail, transit and port projects throughout the country. The grant program was previously known as the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) and the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Discretionary Grants.

DOT receives hundreds of applications in the grant competition. In total, Congress has dedicated nearly $12.1 billion for 14 rounds of national infrastructure investments to fund projects designed to have a significant local or regional impact.