About $300 million in funding for nine projects, serving 230,000 vehicles per day
More than 4,600 bridge repair or replacement projects are already underway
President Biden’s Invest in America The agenda is growing the American economy from the bottom up and middle-out, not the top-down, and as part of that rebuilding our nation’s bridges in cities and towns across America. Today, close out Invest in America During the visit, Vice President Harris and senior administration officials will announce nearly $300 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act’s Bridge Investment Program for nine bridge projects in both rural and urban areas in eight states and the District of Columbia. These bridges serve more than 230,000 vehicles per day, and the investments will save taxpayers time and money by reducing congestion and making long-overdue improvements.
To make this important announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Arland D. in Washington, DC. Williams Jr. will visit the Memorial Bridge, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg will visit upstate New York, and senior adviser and White House infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu will visit Madison, Wisconsin. and other senior Biden-Harris administration officials will fan out across the country today to highlight additional bridge projects receiving grant funding.
Bridges are lifelines for communities, connecting families to their loved ones, providing critical access and evacuation routes for students to schools, workers to their jobs, grocery stores, and emergencies. Bridge projects also create well-paying construction jobs. That’s why the Biden-Harris administration is on the ground to rebuild bridges across the country. To date, the administration has funded more than 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country.
For three weeks Invest in America On the trip, President Biden, Vice President Harris and twenty senior administration officials traveled to more than 50 cities and towns in 25 states and territories across the country that are directly benefiting from the president. Invest in America Agenda – including bipartisan infrastructure legislation, deflation legislation, CHIPS and SCIENCE Act, and the American Rescue Plan. During the visit, the administration officials told how it happened Invest in America The agenda has unlocked more than $435 billion in private sector manufacturing investment, funded 23,000 infrastructure projects in 4,500 cities and towns, opened record small businesses, and helped create more than 12 million jobs since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office.
Bridge Investment Program Grants
The nearly $300 million announced today will go toward nine bridge projects that connect more than 230,000 vehicles daily. Projects include repair, rehabilitation and/or replacement of the following bridge projects:
- Palm Avenue Overcrossing Bridge in San Diego, California $24 million to make improvements that will reduce traffic delays and increase freight movement while reducing long-term maintenance costs. More than 38,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day and it is estimated that the project will generate more than $30 million in benefits from reduced congestion and traffic delays on this critical route.
- Lafayette Avenue Bascule Bridge in Bay City, Michigan The 85-year-old bridge, which serves 16,000 vehicles a day in the Great Lakes Bay Area, will receive $73 million to replace it. The project is expected to save millions of dollars in travel time and costs associated with safety improvements.
- Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge near Albany, New York The bridge connecting I-87 in Albany County to the New York State/Massachusetts state line will receive $21 million to repair, which serves approximately 17,000 vehicles per day. The improvements are estimated to save millions of dollars in travel time and maintenance costs.
- Rural Bridges in Northwest Oklahoma Seven bridges serving 3,000 vehicles per day will receive $11.5 million to replace them, improving reliability and capacity for the region’s farmers, ranchers and energy workers.
- Burghardt Bridge in Portland, Oregon Portland’s St. John’s neighborhood will get $13.9 million to replace a 93-year-old viaduct, which carries 8,000 vehicles a day.
- Rural Bridges in Northwest South Carolina, will receive $51.2 million to replace six bridges, ages 68 to 101, that carry an estimated 13,000 vehicles daily and communities that rely heavily on these bridges to commute to work and school and transport goods across the region. Without the project, these bridges would have to shut down traffic, resulting in long delays, detours and travel costs
- US-59 San Antonio River Bridge in San Antonio, Texas A bridge that will receive $14 million to replace serves more than 4,200 vehicles a day, many of which travel to and from major ports in the area. Without the project, the bridge would have been closed for at least 9 months, resulting in a 50-mile detour.
- Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge that carries the northbound lanes of I-395 $72 million to rehabilitate the bridge, which serves more than 88,000 vehicles a day and connects people and goods from Arlington, Virginia to Washington, DC.
- John Nolen Drive Bridge in Madison, Wisconsin Madison will receive $15.1 million to replace six bridges that serve 45,000 vehicles a day along a major artery in downtown Madison.
This competitive grant program was limited to bridge projects with eligible costs of up to $100 million.
Building bridges from coast to coast
More than 43,000 bridges across the United States are in poor condition in need of repair. For decades, American presidents have promised to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure but have not delivered. President Biden and Vice President Harris brought together Democrats, independents and Republicans to pass the most transformative investment in transportation infrastructure since the Eisenhower-era Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The bipartisan infrastructure act includes a historic $40 billion investment in repair or replace bridges across the country with additional funding streams to advance major and rural-focused bridge repairs. This funding will help fix some of our nation’s most significant bridges and at least 15,000 smaller bridges across the country.
Today’s grant announcements are on top of billions of dollars in other bridge and highway funding already flowing to every U.S. state and territory, helping communities rebuild, repair and replace thousands of bridges across the country and restore vital connections for commuters, responders, truck drivers, public transit riders. And much more.
- In January 2022, the Department of Transportation (DOT) launched the New Bridge Formula Program, which provides funding for states, tribes and territories to repair bridges over five years, including $5.5 billion in 2022. Another $5.5 billion was released for 2023. Some of the projects already benefiting from this funding include:
- the rehabilitation of the West Mission Bay Drive bridge in San Diego, California, for which Infrastructure Coordinator Landrieu and Federal Highway Administrator Shailene Bhatt cut a ribbon last week;
- repairs to the I-270 bridge over the Mississippi River connecting St. Louis, Missouri and Madison County, Illinois;
- repairs to North Carolina’s Dare Country Bridge, which connects Roanoke Island to the North Carolina mainland and is one of the state’s longest bridges; and,
- Repairs to the I-65 bridge over the Sepulga River in Alabama, which was built in 1960 and is an important transportation route for this rural community.
- In October 2022, FHWA announced $20 million in bridge planning grants for 24 projects in 24 states. These grants were designed to build a pipeline of construction-ready bridge projects that are now in the early stages of project development.
- In January 2023, FHWA announced $2.1 billion in large bridge project grants to make critical improvements to four nationally significant bridges: the Brent Spence Bridge connecting Kentucky and Ohio; Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California; Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and the Calumet River Bridge in Chicago, Illinois. These bridges serve as a vital link for local residents, communities and both regional and national economies. In addition to the four major-bridge project grants in FY22, FHWA announced an additional bridge planning grant to the US Army Corps of Engineers in the amount of $1.6 million to advance critical planning work in support of the replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore bridges. Cape Cod Canal.
- Bridges of regional or national importance have received funding under other Department of Transportation grant programs, including the “RAISE”, “INFRA”, “RURAL”, and “MEGA” programs:
- Calcasieu River I-10 bridge replacement in Louisiana;
- replacement of the Alligator River Bridge on US Highway 64 with a modern high-rise fixed span bridge along the primary east-west route in northeastern North Carolina between I-95 and the Outer Banks;
- replacement of the existing I-39/90/94 Wisconsin River Bridge with two new bridge spans;
- rehabilitation of the Newport Pell Bridge, a 4-lane suspension bridge that carries Route 138 over Narragansett Bay and connects mainland Rhode Island to Newport;
- replacement of the Winooski River Bridge that carries US Routes 2 and 7 between Winooski and Burlington, Vermont; and,
- Reconstruction of the Stillwater River Bridge on West Reserve Drive in Kalispell, Montana.
In his first State of the Union address in 2022, President Biden highlighted how our historic federal investments in infrastructure will make a visible impact in the lives of American families by pledging to begin repairing 1,500 bridges. In his 2023 State of the Union, he was able to outline how the administration has surpassed these goals, launching more than 3,700 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country. Today, the number of bridge repair and replacement projects initiated with the support of the Biden-Harris administration exceeds 4,600.
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