Vice President Harris and senior Biden administration officials announced 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.
There are more than 43,000 bridges in poor condition across the United States in need of repair. 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. To date, the Biden administration has funded over 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country.
To close out the Investing in America tour, Vice President Harris visited the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., Transportation Secretary Buttigieg visited upstate New York, Senior Advisor and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu visited Madison, Wisconsin, and other senior Biden-Harris Administration officials traveled across the country to highlight additional bridge projects receiving grant funds.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris brought together Democrats, Independents, and Republicans to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes a historic $40 billion in dedicated investment to repair or replace bridges across the country. There is additional funding streams to advance major and rural-focused bridge repair. This funding should help fix some of the nation’s most significant bridges and at least 15,000 smaller bridges across the country.
The nearly $300 million announced 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.
The recent 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.
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 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.
