A busy South Jersey state highway that bisects five towns will receive an $8 million federal grant to make needed safety upgrades, the federal government announced Thursday. The project is one of 37 across the country that will receive a combined $4.9 billion in federal funding, the Biden administration announced.

The project on Route 168 — also known as the Black Horse Pike in Camden County — is the only one in New Jersey that received federal MEGA and INFRA program grants. More than 200 applications were received in what federal officials called a very competitive process to secure the grants.

The Route 168 project will reconstruct pavement on an almost two-mile section of the Black Horse Pike in Audubon, Audubon Park, Haddon Township, Camden and Woodlynne borough, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during a Wednesday press briefing.

The project also will resurface another section of Route 168 in Audubon and Mount Ephraim and include complete streets designs, which provides facilities for all road users. One of the reasons for the project is to address “known safety challenges for an overburdened community by modernizing existing infrastructure,” according to a description.

That includes accessible sidewalks, eight signalized intersections, a railroad crossing and bike lanes, which Buttigieg said, “have safety benefit and are not just (for) recreation … and other infrastructure (projects) that are unglamorous, but as a former mayor, I care deeply about.”

What helped put Route 168 over the top was that it and other successful projects featured many benefits including safety, streetscapes, job creations, climate change and equity, Buttigieg said.

“We saw multiple overlapping benefits and it’s how many made it to top of list,” he said.

The grants are funded by the larger $2 billion Nov. 2021 bipartisan federal infrastructure law that has provided $400 billion in funding for more than 40,000 infrastructure projects across the nation. Funding form the MEGA program is among the $11 billion in federal funds from various sources to build the Gateway Rail Tunnel under the Hudson River and rehabilitate the two existing, 113-year-old tunnels that carry Amtrak and NJ Transit trains.