President Joe Biden returned to Superior, Wisconsin, on Thursday and vowed to fulfill his promise to replace the decaying John A. Blatnik Memorial Bridge, which connects two port cities in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
During his trip to the swing state on Tuesday, Biden announced $5 billion in federal funding for 37 major infrastructure projects across 12 states, with $1 billion specifically earmarked for replacing the Blatnik Bridge. The 1 1/2-mile bridge’s rapidly deteriorating structure was predicted to close in 2030.
The Biden administration’s investment in deteriorating sites in the Midwest comes with a push to persuade voters in crucial “blue wall” states for the 2024 election. In 2020, Biden defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The plan for the bridge will “expand [its] weight capacity to accommodate freight, building wider shoulders to improve safety, and increasing accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists.” The president will also meet with a small business owner who says he will benefit from the new bridge, according to the White House.
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This bridge is part of the Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda, which allocates $400 billion from the bipartisan Infrastructure Act for over 40,000 infrastructure projects across the U.S.
Biden also announced improvements on the I-5 Bridge in the Pacific Northwest, the Cross Bronx Expressway in New York, and the I-376 corridor of Pittsburgh.
