Feds Approve More Than $23M For Naugatuck River, Nearby Improvements

Press release from USDOT:

Aug. 17, 2022

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced that the Biden-Harris Administration has awarded $41.6 million to support three projects in Connecticut from the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program to help move forward on projects that modernize roads, bridges, transit, rail, ports, and intermodal transportation and make our transportation systems safer, more accessible, more affordable, and more sustainable. This year’s total allocations nationwide include more than $2.2 billion thanks to the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides an additional $7.5 billion over five years for the program to help meet the strong demand to help projects get moving across the country.

“We are proud to support so many outstanding infrastructure projects in communities large and small, modernizing America’s transportation systems to make them safer, more affordable, more accessible, and more sustainable,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Using funds from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this year we are supporting more projects than ever before.”

Projects were evaluated on several criteria, including safety, environmental sustainability, quality of life, economic competitiveness and opportunity, partnership and collaboration, innovation, state of good repair, and mobility and community connectivity. Within these areas, the Department considered how projects will improve accessibility for all travelers, bolster supply chain efficiency, and support racial equity and economic growth – especially in historically disadvantaged communities and areas of persistent poverty.

In Connecticut, the following projects will benefit from RAISE awards:

• CT Trail Connections: Building a Network of Trails to Connect People to Jobs – The Capitol Region Council of Governments will receive $16.4 million to fund design and construction of two connected trails in the municipalities of Plainville and New Britain. The first trail will fill the last major gap in the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail (FCHT). The second trail will connect the FCHT to the CTfastrak trail in New Britain. The project provides more affordable transportation options for over 120,000 residents within 2 miles of the project area, including underserved communities in New Britain. The separated bicycle/pedestrian trail also addresses a known safety issue, as there were 54 bicycle- and pedestrian-vehicle collisions within the last 5 years in the project area.
• Waterbury Active Transportation Economic Resurgence (WATER) Phase II – The City of Waterbury will receive $23.1 million to fund construction of Phase II of the City of Waterbury's section of the Naugatuck River Greenway Trail (approximately 2.3 miles); West Main Street Renovation and Streetscaping Improvements; and the addition of electrical vehicle charging stations at the Downtown Waterbury Train Station.  Project benefits: The project will improve multiple aspects of transportation infrastructure and includes some environmental restoration through capping brownfield sites using a bike trail. The project will increase mobility for underserved residents, particularly by providing safe active transportation options.

• West Main Street Corridor Planning Project – The City of Stamford will receive $2.1 million for this planning project which will support design and engineering of a Complete Street on approximately 1.1 miles of the West Main Street corridor in Stamford that will improve safety at nine dangerous intersections, by adding more visible crosswalks and shorter crossing distances. The planning project also includes adding sidewalks, bus boarding islands, and separated bike lanes where feasible (or shared use of a travel lane). Currently, West Main Street has on-street parking, inadequate sidewalks, and no bike lanes. There have been 480 collisions with 101 injuries over a four-year period at the nine intersections in the project area. This area is ranked top three for total number of injury crashes in the city, and ranked first for pedestrian crashes, with an average of 5 pedestrian crashes per year. The project also supports racial equity because it is addressing severe safety issues in an area with substantial minority populations which heavily rely on walking, biking, or public transit to commute to places of employment. 

Secretary Buttigieg is in Tucson and Phoenix where he is visiting two of the projects receiving RAISE awards. Later this month the Secretary and other senior USDOT officials will fan out across the country to visit additional sites that are receiving RAISE awards to highlight the ways that the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is helping invest in communities and get important infrastructure projects moving in communities large and small.

The full list of awards can be found here.

Additional background:

• 2022 RAISE grants are for planning and capital investments that support roads, bridges, transit, rail, ports, or intermodal transportation. 
• 50% of funding is designated for projects in rural areas, and 50% of the funding is designated for projects in urban areas. 
• Nearly two-thirds of projects are located in areas of persistent poverty or historically disadvantaged communities. 
• The largest grant award is $25 million. Per statute, no more than $341.25 million could be awarded to a single state in this round of funding. 
• Among this year’s selected projects, 11 included a local hire provision. 
• Several projects include workforce development aspects including four projects that have project labor agreements, eight projects that have registered apprenticeship programs and an additional eight projects with other workforce development provisions. 

The RAISE program is one of several ways communities can secure funding for projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s competitive grant programs. Later this year, the Biden-Harris Administration will announce recipients of the first-ever National Infrastructure Project Assistance (MEGA) program, as well as the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) program and the Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program (RURAL).

This press release was produced by USDOT. The views expressed here are the author's own.