Bridge grants will come, Keating says, still plenty of time
Money to replace the Cape’s two only connecting bridges will be available to get the job done when the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers get their acts together on a winning application to fund the critical project, Congressman Bill Keating said Sunday.
“It’s going to be done and it has to be done,” Keating said.
He was speaking with WCVB hosts Sharman Sacchetti and Ed Harding on the Sunday political show, On the Record, when the south coast Democrat said the plan to replace the aging and often overcrowded bridges which cross the Cape Cod Canal will go forward — eventually — despite twice being denied in recent rounds of funding by the federal government.
The Bourne and Sagamore Bridges were built in the 30s by the Army Corps which still owns and maintains them. They represent the only way of getting to the Cape and Islands by road and must, according USACE, be replaced sooner rather than later.
The Corps has twice asked for funding under the infrastructure law passed by the Biden Administration last year, but has been told “no” just as many times.
Keating said the denials of previous grant requests were the result of missing commitments on the part of the Army Corps and the state, which apparently won’t be absent from following applications.
“There were no matching funds,” Keating explained, though, he said, the grant application required such funds to be identified. “That’s been changed. I think the new grants are going to show those matching funds. The new governor is committed to matching funds for that.”
Gov. Maura Healey, after a recent trip to Washington D.C., told reporters she had spoken to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg directly about the importance of the bridges.
“I think they understand the importance of these projects and the importance of funding it and really this is going to be about working together at the state and federal level to get this done,” she said.
It is not yet time to panic about the money either, Keating said, since the bridges are not going to go up overnight and there will be more rounds of grant awarding in the future.
“These are long term efforts and the funding is over time,” he said. “People should understand this — and I live just a few miles from the Bourne Bridge — we’re not going to begin construction until about 2025 and there won’t be completion until maybe about 2031.”
In January, the federal government rejected the Army Corps’ request for about half the estimated $4 billion in design and construction costs for the bridges, which serve the 263,000 residents of the Cape and Islands as well as 5 million annual visitors. That was just months after the government had denied an ask for about $1 billion.
The plan, as it stands, would replace both bridges with a pairs of one way structures and improve the adjoining roadway, which is owned and maintained by MassDOT. Not funding the project would still be expensive, according to the Army Corps, with an estimated $775 million in upkeep costs expected over the next 50 years.