BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEW INVESTMENTS REPAIRING BRIDGES ACROSS AMERICA

Nearly $300 Million in Funding for Nine Projects, Serving 230,000 Vehicles Daily
Over 4,600 Bridge Repair or Replacement Projects Already in Progress

President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is growing the American economy from the bottom up and middle-out, not top-down, and as part of that is rebuilding our nation’s bridges in cities and towns across America.  Today, to close out the Investing in America tour, Vice President Harris and senior administration officials will announce nearly $300 million for nine bridge projects in both rural and urban areas in eight states and the District of Columbia, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Bridge Investment Program. These bridges serve over 230,000 vehicles combined per day, and the investments will save taxpayers time and money by reducing congestion and making long-overdue improvements.

To highlight this important announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., Transportation Secretary Buttigieg will visit upstate New York, Senior Advisor and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu will visit Madison, Wisconsin, and other senior Biden-Harris Administration officials will fan out across the country to highlight additional bridge projects receiving grant funds today.  

Bridges are lifelines for communities, connecting families to their loved ones, students to school, workers to their jobs, goods to stores, and providing critical access and evacuation routes in case of an emergency. Bridge projects also create good-paying construction jobs. That is why the Biden-Harris Administration has hit the ground running to rebuild bridges across the country. To date, the Administration has funded over 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country.

Over the course of the three-week Investing in America tour, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and twenty senior Administration Officials traveled to over 50 cities and towns in 25 states and territories across the country that are benefiting directly from the President’s Investing in America agenda – including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the American Rescue Plan. During the tour, Administration officials have touted how the Investing in America agenda has unleashed over $435 billion in private sector manufacturing investments, funded 23,000 infrastructure projects across 4,500 cities and towns, spurred record small business starts, and has helped create over 12 million jobs since President Biden and Vice President Harris took office.

BRIDGE INVESTMENT PROGRAM GRANTS
 
The nearly $300 million announced today will go to nine bridge projects that serve over 230,000 vehicles combined per day. The projects include the repair, rehabilitation, and/or replacement of the following bridge projects:
 

• Palm Avenue Overcrossing Bridge in San Diego, California will receive $24 million to make improvements that will reduce traffic delays and increase freight movements, while reducing long-term maintenance costs. Over 38,000 vehicles cross this bridge every day and it is estimated that this project will create over $30 million in benefits from reduced congestion and traffic delays on this critical route.
• Lafayette Avenue Bascule Bridge in Bay City, Michigan will receive $73 million to replace the 85-year-old bridge that serves 16,000 vehicles per day in the Great Lakes Bay Region. The project is expected to save tens of millions of dollars in costs associated with travel time and safety improvements.
• Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge near Albany, New York will receive $21 million to repair the bridge connecting I-87 in Albany County to the New York State/Massachusetts State line, which serves an estimated 17,000 vehicles per day. The improvements are projected to save tens of millions of dollars in travel time and maintenance costs.
• Rural bridges in Northwest Oklahoma will receive $11.5 million to replace seven bridges that serve 3,000 vehicles per day, improving reliability and capacity for the region’s farmers, ranchers and energy workers.
• Burgard Bridge in Portland, Oregon will receive $13.9 million to replace a 93-year-old viaduct in the St. John’s neighborhood of Portland, which 8,000 vehicles cross every day.
• Rural bridges in Northwest South Carolina, will receive $51.2 million to replace six bridges ranging from 68 to 101 years old that serve an estimated 13,000 vehicles per day and communities that heavily rely on these bridges to travel to work and school and transport goods across the region. Without the project, these bridges would have to close to traffic, causing long delays, detours, and travel costs.
• The US-59 San Antonio River Bridge in San Antonio, Texas will receive $14 million to replace a bridge that serves over 4,200 vehicles per day, including many traveling to and from major water ports in the area. Without the project the bridge would have to close for at least 9 months, leading to a 50-mile detour.
• Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge which carries the northbound lanes of I-395 will receive $72 million to rehabilitate the bridge that serves over 88,000 vehicles per day and connects people and goods from Arlington, Virginia to Washington, D.C.
• The John Nolen Drive Bridges in Madison, Wisconsin will receive $15.1 million to replace six bridges that serve 45,000 vehicles per day along a major artery into 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

There are more than 43,000 bridges in poor condition across the United States in need of repair. For decades, American presidents have promised to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure but did not deliver. President Biden and Vice President Harris brought together Democrats, Independents, and Republicans to pass the most transformative investment in transportation infrastructure since passage of the Eisenhower-era Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes a historic $40 billion in dedicated investment to repair or replace bridges across the country, with additional funding streams to advance major and rural-focused bridge repair. This funding will help us fix some of the nation’s most significant bridges and at least 15,000 smaller bridges across the country.

Today’s grant announcements come on top of billions of dollars in other bridge and highway funding already flowing to every U.S. state and territory that is helping communities rebuild, repair, and replace  thousands of bridges across the nation and restoring connections that are vital to commuters, emergency responders, truck drivers, public transit riders, and 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.  Several projects already benefitting from this funding include:
  • Rehabilitation of the West Mission Bay Drive Bridge in San Diego, California, which Infrastructure Coordinator Landrieu and Federal Highways Administrator Shailen Bhatt cut a ribbon on last week;
  • Repair of the I-270 Bridge over the Mississippi River which connects St. Louis, Missouri and Madison County, Illinois;
  • Repair of the Dare Country Bridge in North Carolina which connects Roanoke Island to the mainland of North Carolina and is one of the longest bridges in the state; and,
  • Repair of 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.  Those grants were designed to create 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; the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California; the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and the Calumet River Bridges in Chicago, Illinois. These bridges serve as a vital link for local residents, communities, and both the regional and national economy. In addition to the four FY22 large-bridge project grants, FHWA also announced an additional bridge planning grant to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the amount of $1.6 million to advance critical planning work in support of replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges over the Cape Cod Canal.
• Regionally or nationally significant bridges have also received funding under other Department of Transportation grant programs, including the “RAISE”, “INFRA”, “RURAL”, and “MEGA” programs including:
  • Replacement of the Calcasieu River I-10 Bridge Replacement in Louisiana;
  • Replacement of the Alligator River Bridge on U.S. 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 the 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 would create a visible impact in the lives of American families by committing to start repair on 1,500 bridges. In his 2023 State of the Union, he was able to outline how the Administration surpassed these goals, launching over 3,700 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country. Today, the number of bridge repair and replacement projects started through support from the Biden-Harris Administration has passed 4,600.

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