Baltimore rail project to receive US$125m grant

The Maryland Department of Transportation is to receive a US$125m grant for Baltimore’s Howard Street Railroad (CSX Transportation) tunnel to enable double stacking of shipping containers to and from the Port of Baltimore.

The funds come from the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects Programme, or INFRA.

PortMiami is to receive US$8.04m for its Seaboard Marine Terminal rehabilitation and expansion. This is the second year in a row this PortMiami terminal project will get an INFRA grant after it received US$7m for a new gate complex in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) will receive US$9.02m for Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River bulkhead project to replace dilapidated bulkhead on the Cuyahoga River Ship Channel and prevent a collapse of Franklin Hill along Irishtown Bend.

This is a key economic and environmental protection funding initiative for the Port of Cleveland, which worked in coordination with NOACA to secure the INFRA grant.

Additionally, US$125m has been awarded to the Alabama Department of Transportation Transportation to construct a new, six-lane, cable-stayed I-10 bridge across the Mobile River channel near the Port of Mobile.

Kurt Nagle, president and CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), said: “The INFRA program is a tool that ports must fully utilize for our freight network and supply chain to operate efficiently.

“While many maritime projects are complex and need multimodal funding tools to build them, there are plenty of highway corridor and first/last mile projects in need of federal funding.”

INFRA was established in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015 and is funded by the Highway Trust Fund.