Connecticut will receive nearly $6 billion in federal funds to improve its infrastructure. What projects will they decide to fund?
“These are projects that will ultimately be transformational and while there are a lot of folks who will go to work this year, much of this money will be spent out over time to make sure we’re getting big long-term investments,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said.
Murphy said Connecticut may be getting $6 billion, but it can compete for more than $100 billion in additional grants.
“We think we will do incredibly well when it comes to some of these other competitive programs,” Murphy said.
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Connecticut will receive $3.58 billion for highways, $1.3 billion for public transit, $561 million for bridges and $445 million for water improvements.
How soon will Connecticut get the money?
“Nobody is more impatient, I can tell you, than Joe Biden to get this money out there into roads, and bridges and rail,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.
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Blumenthal said the president wants to see improvements.
“It is historic in magnitude and proportion, but we are far from done,” he added.
“There are major initiatives that were not fully funded. Things like Gold Star Bridge. The interchange of 91, 691 and 15 in Meriden, work on I-95,” Deputy Transportation Commissioner Mark Rolfe said.
Rolfe said they are working on a list of projects.
“We’re investing state dollars in them but we’ll be able to use federal dollars now to leverage the state program,” he explained.
One of the projects that could receive these federal funds is the 91, 691, and Route 15 interchange in Meriden where there was a six-car accident this weekend.
“We’re going to totally reconstruct that interchange,” Rolfe said.
Another project involves removing the traffic signals on Route 9 and reconstructing the exit ramp to Route 17.
“We had projects within our capital program that were constrained because we didn’t have enough money. We can now go back and revisit those,” Rolfe said.
