A Coast city just won a federal grant to start work on a road connecting U.S. 90 to I-10
The city of Long Beach won a $16.8 million federal grant to get started on a road project that will ultimately connect U.S. 90 to Interstate 10, creating development opportunities in western Harrison County and a new evacuation route.
Long Beach was one of three Mississippi winners of this year’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) Grants, administered by the Department of Transportation. The 2021 program awarded a total of $1 billion to 90 projects in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Guam.
Long Beach community affairs director Jenny Levens said the grant will allow the city to get started with the necessary environmental studies on the project. The RAISE grant will fund the first stage, which will connect U.S. 90 to Beatline Road, just north of the Wal-Mart Supercenter.
“We’re at the very beginning,” she said. “It’s a conceptual project. Nothing has been designed yet.”
A competitive grant program
The complete project is ultimately expected to cost about $100 million, she said.
Levens said the start of construction is likely more than a year away. So far, she said, the city isn’t aware of any homes or businesses that will be affected by the planned project.
In a press release, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it had been able to fund only about 10% of the applicants.
“We’re proud to support these great projects that will improve infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, make us safer, advance equity, and combat climate change,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The press release said the five-lane roadway between U.S. 90 and Beatline Road will include pedestrian and bike paths. It will include shoulders, sidewalks and a divided median.
“This will benefit the area during emergency disaster evacuations that are often caused by weather-related incidents,” the release said. Flooding and drainage concerns will be addressed through integrating an emerging regional flood reduction and drainage project.”
The RAISE grant program is separate from the $1 trillion infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed on Monday.
Previous Coast winners of the grant include Gulfport, which won $20.5 million to help pay for a $45 million road across undeveloped wetlands around I-10 and U.S. 40. When Gulfport won in 2018, the program was called Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD).
Here are the other two Mississippi winners described in the Department of Transportation press release:
- The city of Jackson “will receive $20 million for the Rebuilding Medgar Evers Boulevard project, which will reconstruct a 1.5-mile section of a former interstate highway, into a multimodal, complete street... The project generates safety benefits by providing sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, improving transit stops, and clearly defining access points and travel lanes along the corridor to reduce the number of conflicts among motorists, pedestrian, and transit vehicles.”
The Rail Authority of East Mississippi “will receive $2 million for the East Mississippi Intermodal Railroad project, which will complete planning and preconstruction activities to complete a 60-mile Class III rail line connecting two existing shortline railroads to establish continuous rail service along the eastern side of Mississippi.... By planning to fill a gap in Mississippi’s rail network, the project will improve efficiency, reliability, and cost-competitiveness of goods movement in the state and help create opportunities for rural businesses to compete in the global marketplace.”
