$959,000 in funding for Hartland Road bridge improvements

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the Biden-Harris administration awarded $959,000 from the new Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program (Rural) to Niagara County to support the rehabilitation of the Hartland Road bridge.

The project will rehabilitate the Hartland Road bridge over Golden Hill Creek to restore it to a state of good repair and meet modern safety and design standards.

The current Hartland Road bridge is over 70 years old and has not had any major rehabilitation work in more than 30 years. USDOT stated, “The project improvements will ensure that the bridge meets current safety standards. The project will use Accelerated Bridge Construction techniques in order to minimize the bridge’s closure time and related detours. Once complete, the rehabilitated bridge will support Niagara County’s agricultural economy.

“Due to decades of disinvestment, around 13% of rural roads and 10% of off-system bridges, most of which are in rural areas, are in poor condition. The fatality rate on rural roads is also two times greater than on urban roads. Facing these sobering figures, the Biden administration made supporting Americans living in rural areas a top priority. And with a total of $44 billion available through the infrastructure law to help rural communities repair and improve their roads, bridges, airports, ports and transit systems, USDOT is leading the charge to help rebuild rural transportation systems to benefit residents for decades to come.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, “Infrastructure investments haven’t always reached rural America, leaving far too many roads, bridges and other parts of the transportation system across our country in disrepair. Today’s announcement is one of many ways this administration is delivering the investments that rural communities have gone without for far too long, modernizing transportation, creating economic opportunity and making life better for millions of people.”

The program will invest a total of approximately $2 billion through 2026 for projects that improve highways, bridges and tunnels, address highway safety, increase access to agricultural, commercial, energy or freight facilities that support the economy, and bring flexible transit services to rural and Tribal areas. The USDOT received applications requesting approximately $10 billion in funding, far exceeding the nearly $300 million in 2022 funding available.

More information about this year’s rural grant recipients can be found here.

Applications were evaluated based on several criteria, including project readiness, cost-effectiveness, and whether the project supported critical goals like enhancing safety, increasing mobility and reliability, improving resiliency and restoring infrastructure to a state of good repair.

USDOT added, “Applicants for the rural program also benefited from a streamlined application process that reduced the burden for applicants by allowing them to submit one application for three different grant programs: rural, the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA), and the new National Infrastructure Project Assistance program (Mega).”

For more information, click here.

USDOT announced INFRA award recipients in September and said it expects to announce the recipients of this round of mega funding early next year.

In New York, over the next five years, Biden’s infrastructure law will invest $13.6 billion in roads and bridges, $11.2 billion for public transportation, $175 million for electric vehicle charging, and $685 million for airports. For more, click here.