Bridge projects receive federal funding

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has identified projects to receive funding from what it calls the first round of Large Bridge Project Grants tied to the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act’s Bridge Investment Program.

Four projects—one each in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Kentucky—will receive funds from a pool of about $40 billion to be spent during the next five years on efforts to “help repair or rebuild 10 of the most economically significant bridges in the country, along with thousands of bridges across the country,” the DOT says.

The largest amount of announced funding, $1.385 billion, will go to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet “to rehabilitate and reconfigure the existing Brent Spence Bridge to improve interstate and local traffic flow between the interconnected Kentucky and Ohio communities on either side of the Ohio River.”

The DOT describes the current bridge as “the second worst truck bottleneck in the nation” even as it carries more than $400 billion in freight each year. The project includes construction of a new companion bridge immediately west of the existing bridge that will be designed to accommodate interstate through traffic on two bridge decks. Also being funded is what the DOT calls the “complete reconstruction of eight-mile interstate approach corridors both in Ohio and Kentucky, replacing 54 additional bridges.” That project will separate I-75 traffic from local traffic, “making commutes quicker and improving freight passage along this critical corridor,” the DOT says.

In California, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District in the San Francisco Bay area will receive $400 million to replace, retrofit and install structural elements on the Golden Gate Bridge “to increase resiliency against earthquakes,” the DOT says.

An estimated 37 million vehicles cross the Golden Gate Bridge each year, including 555,000 freight trucks, while beneath it passes waterborne commerce through the Golden Gate Strait connected to the Port of Oakland, the agency says.

In Connecticut, the state DOT will receive $158 million to “rehabilitate” the northbound structure of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, which is part of the Interstate 95 corridor over the Thames River between New London and Groton, Connecticut. According to the U.S. DOT, the bridge carries five lanes of traffic and 42,600 vehicles per day as a connection for people and goods traveling between New York and New England. “The rehabilitation will address structural repairs, increase load capacity and eliminate a load restriction for overweight vehicles,” the DOT says.

The city of Chicago will receive $144 million to maintain and strengthen four bridges over the Calumet River on the south side of the city. The Calumet River, a site of abundant industry activity, including metals production, connects Lake Michigan with the Lake Calumet Port District that connects the Illinois River with the inland waterways system that runs south all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Bridge projects are typically steel intensive, with scrap-fed steel producer Nucor Corp. recently pointing to the federal funding of such project as one factor providing anticipated increased demand for its steel throughout this decade.

“Rehabilitating these bridges ensures that communities on either side of the river remain connected and the bridges continue to function to allow barge and ship traffic to traverse to the Illinois International Port and beyond. The project will eliminate a load restriction and truck detours,” the DOT says.

“These first Large Bridge grants will improve bridges that serve as vital connections for millions of Americans to jobs, education, health care and medical care and help move goods from our farms and factories,” Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg says. “And over the next four years we will be able to fund construction for the pipeline of shovel-ready projects we are creating through Bridge Planning Grants.”

In addition to the four fiscal year 2022 Large Bridge Project Grants announced in early January of this year, FHWA says an additional $1.6 million bridge planning grant has been made to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “to advance critical planning work in support of replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges over the Cape Cod Canal” in Massachusetts.