Lori Trahan: $21.4 million in federal funding for 4 Lowell bridges

By Melanie Gilbert 

LOWELL — The city of Lowell will become a bridge to somewhere thanks to more than $21 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding to support four bridge rehabilitation and preservation projects across the city.

The legislation provides $550 billion from 2022 through 2026 of new federal investment in roads, bridges, mass transit, water infrastructure, resilience and broadband.

U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, a Lowell native who represents the 3rd Congressional District, announced the bridge funding with U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and City Manager Tom Golden.

“I voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law because families here in Lowell and across Massachusetts deserve to know the bridges they drive on or walk across are safe,” Trahan said in a statement.

The four city-owned bridges that are part of the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant program, that is embedded within the legislation, includes:

• Broadway Street Bridge over the West Canal in the Acre

• Market Street Bridge over the Merrimack Canal in Downtown Lowell

• Lawrence Street Bridge over the River Meadow Brook in Back Central

• Swamp Locks Pedestrian Bridge over the Lower Pawtucket Canal in the Acre.

The bridges all fall within qualified census tracts and areas of persistent poverty as mandated by the grant, in which 50% of households in the neighborhood have income below 60% of the area median gross income, or have a poverty rate of 25% or more. The AMI for the commonwealth is almost $128,000, which would mean a household income in those Lowell neighborhoods of $51,000 or less.

In 2019, Lowell’s Department of Planning and Development commissioned a study of the Swamp Locks Pedestrian Bridge, which documented significant erosion of the surface, subsurface and supporting structures. At that time, the study estimated bridge repairs in excess of $1 million.

Trahan’s February letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg specifically referenced the historical and practical link Lowell’s bridges — like the Swamp Locks — have to Lowell’s National Historical Park designation.

“This project will have a positive impact on the quality of life for residents, promote tourism, spur regional connectively for equal opportunities and economic competitiveness,” she wrote.

That historical connection was also noted by Markey, who tied Lowell’s success to its more than 116 bridges.

“Lowell’s bridges are inseparable from the city’s identity and economy,” Markey said.

Lowell’s National Historic Park was created in 1978, on the strength of its industrial and immigrant history. The city was built on the banks of the Merrimack River and the 30-foot drop of the Pawtucket Falls powered the 19th-centrury mills that employed waves of immigrants, who also dug the city’s unique canal and locks.

According to Lowell Canal Survey historian Patrick M. Malone, Lowell became “America’s first great industrial city,” a distinction Golden noted in his remarks.

“Lowell is a city of canals — the bridge repairs will provide safe access for residents, improve quality of life in neighborhoods and make our infrastructure that much more secure,” he said.

The city’s RAISE grant is the largest of any RAISE award in Massachusetts and ranks among the top 50 largest allocations in the nation this year.

“Securing Lowell’s bridges with this multimillion-dollar federal investment will be felt for generations to come,” Warren said.

The funding is one among other large-scale infrastructure opportunities for Lowell. Trahan joined then-Gov. Charlie Baker to announce that $170 million in federal funding from the BIL package to replace the Rourke Bridge in Lowell.

And the recently completed and reopened Central Street Bridge Project was one of five canal bridge rehabilitations in Lowell that were jointly funded in a 2017 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, Grant.

“These bridge projects,” Trahan said, referring to the latest RAISE grant, “will improve life for every Lowell resident and strengthen the Mill City.”