Rte. 37 $25M RAISE Grant Tops Off Rebuild, Upgrades

WARWICK, RI — Friday morning, Gov. Dan McKee, RI’s Congressional delegation, state officials and Mayor Frank Picozzi kicked off the $25 million Rte. 37 RAISE Grant Award Project that will finish the transit corridor between Cranston and Warwick connecting Rte. 95 and Rte. 295.

U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Congressman Seth Magaziner, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti, Jr. also joined the kickoff event.

RIDOT is already working to rebuild or refurbish 21 bridges along the R.te 37 corridor through Phases 1 and 2 of its planned Rte. 37 work.  This latest award is part of a larger plan for the corridor that includes Rte. 37 and I-295 interchange improvements to address the safety, congestion, and weaving concerns in the interchange area and along I-295 North up to Route 6, according to a statement on the project from Reed’s office.

Federal funding will cover about eighty percent of the $164.5 million project costs for Phase 1 and 2.  The $25 million will go toward the third and final phase of Route 37 work, which is estimated to cost about $100 million. That work will focus on the road’s most eastern portion between I-295 in Cranston and Post Road in Warwick.

Work will include the major rehabilitation, replacement, or removal of 8 bridges. The new federal funds will also help right-size sections of the road, replace an overbuilt loop-ramp with an at-grade interchange, and eliminate redundant infrastructure to open up land for future economic development. RIDOT will also build a new structure for high-capacity transit, install Transit Signal Priority (TSP) at approximately eight locations and queue jump lanes for buses, and construct a new, separated bicycle path.

The project also advances the goals of the Bicycle Mobility Plan and Transit Master Plan by extending the New London Avenue bridge to support future complete streets and transit enhancements along New London Avenue, beginning complete streets improvements along New London Avenue, and building bike path and advisory bike lanes connecting the Washington Secondary Bikeway to Meshanticut Valley Parkway, Route 2, Garden City Center, and Chapel View, according to McKee’s office.

“I helped create the RAISE grant program so Rhode Island and other states could compete for funding for projects like this that are hard to pay for, but much needed to make our roadways safer, more efficient, and reduce pollution and congestion.” said Reed, a leading member of the Appropriations Committee, who helped first established the competitive RAISE grant program back in 2009, when they were originally created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as TIGER grants before changing names to BUILD grants and now RAISE grants.  Senator Reed helped include $7.5 billion for the RAISE grant program in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Congress made $1.5 billion in RAISE grant funding available this year for the U.S. Department of Transportation to award to competitive projects nationwide in 2023.  RAISE grants help communities across the country carry out projects “with significant local or regional impact.”