April 18, 2018

Duckworth, Durbin Announce Over $475,000 to Modernize Illinois’s Infrastructure

 

[WASHINGTON, D.C,] – U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced $475,020 in federal funding today for the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to replace an outdated bridge in Kankakee County. The funding comes from a program within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Highway Administration, which works with state and local governments to maintain the nation’s highway system.

“Repairing and modernizing our nation’s aging infrastructure plays an important role in the overall safety of our highway system, while also helping bring good-paying construction jobs to the local community,” said Duckworth. “Securing funds to revitalize Illinois’s infrastructure is one of my top priorities and I’ll keep working with Senator Durbin to ensure that Illinois receives the federal investments it deserves.”

“Investing in our roads and bridges not only improves public safety – it’s critical to our economy,” Durbin said. “Senator Duckworth and I will continue fighting for local projects like the one announced today that modernize communities and create new economic opportunities.”

The FHA’s Accelerated Innovation Deployment (AID) Demonstration Program awards grants to projects that will implement innovative practices or technologies in highway transportation. This project will be repairing a bridge on Illinois Route 115 over Gar Creek by using prefabricated bridge elements and lateral slide methods. Both of these methods are included within DOT’s Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC), which reduces onsite construction time and the transportation delays that come with it. Prefabricated bridge elements are structural bridge components that are built away from or near the construction site, while the lateral slide method involves constructing the new bridge on temporary supports and then transferring it to where the existing bridge was located, allowing traffic to go mostly uninterrupted throughout the duration of the project.

-30-