State officials in Massachusetts are seeking a $30 million federal boost to help reconstruct Mass. Highway 9 between the towns of Haydenville and Williamsburg in the western part of the state. As part of the effort along the highway, a shared-use path also would be built.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton reported Aug. 27 that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) already has the work scheduled to begin on the $51.6 million project approximately five years from now.
According to Carrie Lavallee, deputy administrator and chief engineer of MassDOT's highway division, federal highway funds through the Rural Surface Transportation Grant program would move the process up a couple of years.
"If we get the grant, the whole project's financed," she explained. "It's a very expensive process, but we think it's worthwhile."
The road project is intended not only to modernize a stretch of the highway, but to resolve flooding from the nearby Mill River and erosion of the roadway embankment, according to an Aug. 21 letter from MassDOT Secretary Gina Fiandaca to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
It also will connect Haydenville and the center of Williamsburg with a brand-new 2-mi. path for bicyclists and pedestrians between the highway and the river.
The lack of space for walking or cycling along that stretch of highway was identified as a problem in Williamsburg's 2008 Open Space Plan and was the impetus for the creation of the Mill River Greenway Committee more than a dozen years ago, committee Chair Gabriel Immerman told the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
The committee has been meeting monthly ever since to advance this project, convening public forums and advocating at the state level. He added that growing public support helped get the greenway plans incorporated into the scheduled rebuild of Mass. 9.
On behalf of the committee, Immerman offered enthusiastic support for the grant application in a letter to Buttigieg in August, saying the project "will address a host of local challenges with one smart and elegant solution."
Currently, the Northampton Bikeway ends just over the Williamsburg line. Along with other connecting projects in the planning stage, the Mass. 9/Mill River Greenway project will create a trail connection all the way through to Williamsburg. The larger goal is to build a trail connection to Boston, 105 mi. to the east, over the Mass Central Rail Trail, where 55 mi. of trails have been constructed to date, according to MassDOT.
The Mass. 9 project is one of several bridge and highway projects pending in the Williamsburg area over the next several years. More immediately, MassDOT is moving ahead with plans to rebuild two bridges over the Mill River in Haydenville and reconstruct the road connection between them.
"It's not an exaggeration to say there's over $100 million worth of infrastructure in the pipeline for Williamsburg in the next five to seven years," Immerman told the Northampton news source.
Gov. Healey Wants Fed Funds for Quartet of State Projects
The administration of Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is pursuing more than $2 billion in federal funding for four different projects under the FY 2023-24 Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant Opportunity, with the Williamsburg project the only one in the rural category.
That grant "supports projects to improve and expand surface transportation in rural areas to increase connectivity, improve the safety and reliability of the movement of people and freight, and generate regional economic growth and improve quality of life," according to a statement from Healey's office.
Also included in the administration's grant application are the replacement of two major Cape Cod bridges, the Allston I-90 Multimodal project, and the North Station Renovation and Draw 1 Bridge Replacement project in Boston.
"From day one, we said our administration was going to compete for the unprecedented level of federal funding opportunities available to support infrastructure projects across our state that are crucial to our communities, economies and environment," Healey continued. "These ambitious applications represent an important step forward toward delivering on that promise."
MassDOT's Lavallee said she expected the grant awards to be announced approximately one year from now.
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