Gov. Maura Healey joined federal and state leaders at the Sagamore Recreation Area on Tuesday, July 16, 2024 to celebrate new federal funding to replace the Sagamore Bridge. Photo by Joshua Qualls | Courtesy of Gov. Maura Healey's Office
Energized by a federal funding jolt, elected officials gathered at the Sagamore Recreation Area last week, against the backdrop of one of the aging Cape Cod bridges that officials say is now significantly closer to being replaced.
The Healey administration announced recently that the state Department of Transportation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won a $993 million federal grant for the Cape Cod bridges replacement effort, which officials have said will start with the Sagamore Bridge, as they also prepare to later replace the Bourne Bridge.
While the grant is massive, the state has so far only secured just over half of the two-bridge project’s more than $4.5 billion price tag. The state has brought in a total $2.415 billion to repair the bridges, according to Healey’s office.
With a blend of state and federal money, Massachusetts can fully cover the cost of replacing the Sagamore Bridge, and the Healey administration is chasing another almost $2 billion in federal funding for the Bourne Bridge, a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey said.
Healey, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating held what was billed as a celebratory press conference near the Sagamore Bridge, cheering on the funding infusion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Bridge Investment Program (BIP). Markey called the announcement an historic day for the region, likening it to “Christmas in July on Cape Cod.”
“Who wants to be a billionaire? Sagamore Bridge,” Markey said. “That is what we are celebrating here today — just an incredible victory. And it is the largest single bridge grant to a single state in the history of the United States, and the single largest competitive grant Massachusetts has received from the federal government.”
Healey said the goal is to get “shovels in the ground by 2027, if not sooner.” Construction is expected to last eight to 10 years, said Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver.
“And we’re going to look to finetune that and narrow that down over the next couple of years as we go into procurement,” Gulliver said.
Officials expect more than $4.5 billion is needed to replace both bridges. The bridges, often heavily congested throughout the summer and holiday weekends, are almost 90 years old and considered “functionally obsolete” by the Corps, which owns them.
Massachusetts so far has secured $1.7 billion in federal dollars for the project, and state officials have committed $700 million. Markey said that federal funding represents nearly 80 percent of the cost to replace the Sagamore Bridge.
State officials in May submitted applications for a pair of federal grants worth $634 million each, Healey spokesperson Karissa Hand told the News Service. The administration also plans to seek an additional $634 million federal grant in the next BIP round, with applications due in October. All those grants are intended to cover replacement costs for the Bourne Bridge, Hand said.
At the press conference, Healey emphasized officials’ urgency in advancing both Cape Cod bridge projects.
“We’re going to be laser-focused, you know, pedal to the metal, on the next stages of this and moving from Sagamore to the Bourne Bridge,” Healey said, referencing how the state was previously unsuccessful in winning federal dollars under the Baker administration.
“We made a calculation at the beginning that we weren’t going to do and repeat the way things have been done in the past in terms of these applications,” the governor continued. “And that’s why we made a decision to chase one and then chase another. We secured this, and tomorrow, we get after the Bourne Bridge, and we’ll be working steadily, all of us collectively, on bringing that home.”
Warren, reflecting on her collaboration with Healey to secure federal money, recalled how officials had “zero dollars” to replace the bridges just two years ago.
“I cannot say enough good things about the Healey team. The governor, and everybody on the governor’s team first got focused — they weren’t talking about 10 different projects, and maybe here and maybe later,” Warren said. “It was: Let’s get money to this bridge, and let’s get it to this bridge now. And they did every single thing we needed in order to increase the chances the money would come here to Massachusetts.”
