US DOT Awards $3.3B to Reconnect Cities Split by Highways

The U.S. Department of Transportation this week awarded $3.3B in discretionary infrastructure grants for its Reconnecting Communities program, which aims to reconnect city neighborhoods that were divided by interstate highways decades ago.

The round of funding, which is being distributed to 132 projects in 41 states, includes 72 planning grants, 52 capital construction grants and eight regional planning grants.

“While the purpose of transportation is to connect, in too many communities past infrastructure decisions have served instead to divide,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, in a statement, adding that the program will “deliver better infrastructure that reconnects residents to jobs, health care, and other essentials.”

The federal program also will unlock large tracts for development by re-routing interstate highways or building caps, also known as “stitches,” over them.

In Boston, the Allston Multimodal Product has been awarded a $355M grant to restructure a portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike and open up a massive site owned by Harvard in the Allston neighborhood.

The university, which is developing a 900K SF parcel in Allston as the first phase of its Enterprise Research Campus, also owns 100 acres in Beacon Yard Park, a former rail yard that is cut off by the Turnpike.

The overall cost of the Boston infrastructure project is estimated at $2B, with the lion’s share coming from the state. Harvard has committed $90M to the project and the city of Boston has pledged $100M in direct funding and $100M from revenue generated from land developed by Harvard, according to a report in the Commonwealth Beacon.

“The Allston Multimodal Project will improve public transit, expand parkland, reconnect residents to beautiful open space along the Charles River and create new opportunities for housing and jobs—and bring much-needed fixes for crumbling infrastructure,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said, in a release.

In Philadelphia, a Chinatown Stitch project will put a cap over a portion of 1-676, also known as the Vine Street Expressway, which splits the neighborhood.

A project in Atlanta will put a cap over portions of I-75 and I-85 known as the Downtown Connector, creating multimodal connections over the highways that will reconnect neighborhoods and enable the development of affordable housing and a new park.

A second federally funded project in Atlanta will reconnect Southside residential communities that were cut off by a confluence of major interstates around Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Reconnecting Communities funds also will be used to put a cap over a portion of Interstate 5 in an area of Portland, Oregon known as the Rose Quarter, reconnecting local streets to provide access to the central city and the waterfront.