Upon returning from a Pentagon meeting with a top Army Corps of Engineers official, Gov. Charlie Baker told GBH News he's confident he's secured a commitment from the federal government to pay for the replacement of the two aging bridges that cross the Cape Cod Canal. The estimated cost of the project: up to $2 billion.
"I am optimistic that we can get this thing launched before the end of this year," Baker said of the financing plan, which has been in the works since shortly after he took office in 2015.
Baker said his meeting with Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Michael Connor resulted in a "pretty solid commitment" without qualification.
The plan would take advantage of the recent infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden to rebuild the bridges as a federal Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration project, which the Army Corps would competitively bid on. If the Corps wins the bid, the funds for construction of the two new bridges and demolition of the old bridges would not affect the funds coming to Massachusetts for its own infrastructure needs.
"Having the Army Corps bid on it means that it's going to land on their ledger as competitive funds that they secured to do the work," Baker said, adding that the plan makes sense because "it's their bridges in the first place."
The two 1,400-foot long, 275-foot high and 40-foot wide spans opened in 1935, and have been outdated for some time. A study of 2014 traffic patterns found that more than 122,000 automobiles pass over the two bridges every day during the peak summer travel season.
Initial plans for the new bridges included much wider structures that featured bicycle and pedestrian lanes, as well as significantly wider roadways with enough room to include two additional "auxiliary" lanes for exiting.
"It's going to be real lanes under modern specs with this, with space on the sides and sidewalks you can actually be comfortable on," Baker said.
Flight cancellations due to Friday's storm forced Baker to drive from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., in the middle of the night to attend the National Governors' Association's meeting on Sunday morning. Baker met with Connor at the Pentagon Monday afternoon after an earlier meeting with another armed forces official and attending the NGA's session with Biden. An engineer, Connor is a top adviser to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth on the Army Corps of Engineers' nonmilitary facilities.
Baker said Connor had met with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey about the bridge earlier this year, and they also had a positive meeting about nailing down the financing.
The state signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in July 2020 which stipulated the Corps would retain ownership of the bridges through the construction of two new spans and the demolition of the old Sagamore and Bourne bridges. The memorandum came with an initial commitment from the Corps that the federal government, not the commonwealth, would carry the cost, which is estimated to be between $1.45 billion and $2 billion for both bridges.
The memorandum stated that Massachusetts's Department of Transportation would take over ownership of the new bridges when they are finished. That agreement was overseen by Baker's then Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack, who now serves on the federal level as the deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.
