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Massachusetts to get $1 billion more in federal money toward replacing Cape Cod bridges
In what officials cast as a watershed moment, the Biden administration is awarding Massachusetts nearly $1 billion toward replacing one of the two aging Cape Cod bridges, cementing the most significant piece of funding yet to help realize the multibillion-dollar project, people with knowledge of the award told the Globe.
The $993 million grant accounts for nearly half of the estimated $2.1 billion it would take to replace the Sagamore Bridge, one of the two 89-year-old structures that provide the only roads on and off the Cape.
State officials have said they plan to replace the Sagamore first, before pursuing more funding for a new span in place of the nearby Bourne Bridge. Replacing both bridges is expected to cost $4.5 billion, state officials have estimated.
The amount Massachusetts is receiving nearly matches the $1.06 billion the state and the US Army Corps of Engineers — which owns and maintains the bridges — had applied for last year through the federal Bridge Investment Program.
Consequently, the new funding effectively ensures a new bridge will be built in place of the Sagamore, federal Massachusetts lawmakers said. US Senator Elizabeth Warren on Friday said the state is “ready to put shovels in the ground,” noting that two years ago, the federal government had committed no money to the project. She called the new grant a “billion-dollar home run.”
“There’s no question: It’s all systems go,” US Representative Bill Keating told the Globe, adding the project was dependent on winning the $1 billion grant. “We would have been nowhere without it. There would be no timeline without it.”
State officials said Massachusetts has now secured more than $1.71 billion in federal funding for the project, including a $372 million grant the state won in December and another $350 million it received in a separate federal appropriations bill. Governor Maura Healey has promised up to $700 million in state money for the entire project, while the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to commit $600 million, subject to Congress appropriating the money.
In an interview Friday evening, Healey emphasized that “there’s still a ways to go” until construction, noting the state is working through environmental permitting, and that it must next select a firm to design and build the bridge.
But she said the state has “never been closer to rebuilding the bridges.”
“This is Christmas in July,” US Senator Edward Markey told the Globe, noting the Sagamore replacement is expected to be wider than the original. “This announcement means that a brand-new shiny Sagamore Bridge is going to be constructed.”
The Sagamore and Bourne bridges are considered functionally obsolete, and officials have said pursuing lengthy and costly fixes in lieu of replacement could be catastrophic to crossings that carry tens of millions of cars each year.
The bridges, which first opened to traffic in 1935, were intended to stand for just 50 years, and the Army Corps recommended in 2020 that both be replaced.
The project is a complex one. The bridges are owned by the federal government, though under an agreement with state officials, the state will take over ownership of and operate the two new spans over the Cape Cod Canal once they are built. State transportation officials said earlier this month that the first new span would be built “fully offset” from the current Sagamore Bridge, so that traffic can continue to flow over it during construction.
Officials have warned that without replacing or fixing each bridge, they’ll be forced to permanently close a lane in each direction by 2032 on the Bourne Bridge and 2036 on the Sagamore Bridge. The Healey administration has estimated that for the Sagamore Bridge alone, construction on a new bridge would begin in late calendar year 2028 and would last until late 2035 or early 2036.
Past attempts to secure federal help went nowhere. The state whiffed on $3 billion in requests to fund the replacement of both during the final months of then-governor Charlie Baker’s administration, partly because the state and Army Corps of Engineers didn’t have a fully fleshed-out financing plan.
A Department of Transportation official told state officials last year that it had identified a $630 million shortfall in the project, according to meeting notes obtained by the Globe.
That prompted Healey to change course. She said last year she’d seek to replace the bridges in a “phased process,” starting first with the Sagamore Bridge, in part because it carries nearly 17,000 more cars on average each day than the Bourne.
The nearly $1 billion grant the state is now getting, however, was crucial for anything to move forward. “This is a game-changing award for Massachusetts,” Healey said.
It remains unclear when, or whether, the state will be able to win the funding to replace the Bourne. A big factor in the state’s success rests with this year’s election, Massachusetts officials said, illustrating how something as bureaucratic as bridge funding can be tightly wound into politics.
President Biden has long been the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, but he is facing growing calls to step aside in the wake of his disastrous debate performance. Biden has repeatedly said he would not drop out of the race.
Warren has publicly stood by Biden, declaring that he’s the party’s nominee and touting his accomplishments, and Markey on Friday told the Globe he believes Biden is “going to be our nominee.” Healey has said Biden should “carefully evaluate” whether he remains Democrats’ best candidate to win against former president Donald Trump in November.
“The Sagamore Bridge is a done deal because Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 and because Democrats controlled the House and the Senate. And now we have to find the funding for the Bourne Bridge,” Markey said Friday, arguing it will be “much more likely” the state can secure the funding for the Bourne Bridge with Biden in office.
“We need to make sure that Joe Biden gets reelected,” he said.
Healey declined to address the “conjecture” of what impact the 2024 presidential election could have on the state’s chances.
“We demonstrated through this application how critical this infrastructure is to Massachusetts and to the region,” she said. “I’ll continue to make that point to Washington, D.C.”
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