Biden announces $3 billion project to restore communities split by highways as he continues campaign blitz

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNN Politics

Published 6:07 PM EDT, Wed March 13, 2024


CNN — President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced $3 billion in funding meant to help reconnect communities split by highways and other infrastructure projects decades ago as he continues his post-State of the Union campaign blitz in several crucial battleground states.

The $3.3 billion, funded by the infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act signed by Biden earlier in his term, will go toward projects across 40 states, according to the White House.

Announcing the funding during a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Biden said his administration is “making decisions to transform your lives decades to come - and we’re going it all across America.”

The projects will “increase access to health care, schools, jobs, places of worship, and other essential services and opportunities, and will strengthen communities by covering highways with public spaces, creating new transit routes, adding sidewalks, bridges, bike lanes, and more,” according to a White House fact sheet. Special attention will be paid to areas that were split by the construction of the federal highway system decades ago.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/politics/biden-infrastructure-campaign-event/index.html

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Link to White House FACT SHEET - FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Over $3 Billion to Reconnect Communities That Have Been Left Behind and Divided by Transportation Infrastructure

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I asked someone in a genealogy group if I could get pics of a place

in NYC where my great grandfather lived in 1900. I had the address from the census of the time. Guy went out and took some pics and sent them to me. It's the off ramp of some expressway or other. And this was a major hotel/rooming house of the era where many an immigrant parked for a year or two. Not exactly famous but significant to some.

[Walleye]

2. Interesting, I know Joe's home city, Wilmington, Delaware was split by I 95 years ago

Would be nice to see the communities re-connected

[BumRushDaShow]

3. The same I-95 split river communities here in Philly

notably after the city was ridiculed for "breaking the continuity" of I-95's straight shot from Maine to Florida.

During the '70s, they started constructing the I-95 connection that would run along and through the city.

NOW they have started the preliminary work (demolitions of overpasses) for one of the projects that will be building a "cap" over the highway to reconnect the historic Olde City neighborhood (where the country was founded) that runs along the Delaware River.



Similarly they are working on a cap over another interstate - I-676 (Vine St. Expressway) that plowed through Chinatown and have dubbed it the "Chinatown Stitch Project".

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[Walleye]

4. That all sounds good. All they've done here so far is a I-495 bypass

I’ll be looking forward to improvements, my brother works in Philly and I used to go there often for work. My niece and her husband will be moving back to Philly soon.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. I-495 is another "divider"

I have spent many hours on the D.C. beltway portion of it as a federal worker when I had to go down there for meetings, etc.