State officials recently unveiled an Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Dashboard, to help Connecticut residents visualize how and where over half of the $6.4 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funds the state has received will be allocated. Per the dashboard, passenger and freight rail projects represent the largest recipient of federal funds, with roads, bridges and other major projects coming in second.
The dashboard was published by Connecticut Open Data, the state’s open data website published by the Office of Policy and Management’s (OPM) Data and Policy Analytics unit, and gives both a sector-by-sector and project-by-project breakdown of how these funds are being spent, as well as a map to show which counties received the most funding.
While the dashboard does not give a complete picture of the state’s BIL fund allocation, with only about $3.7 billion worth of the total $6.4 billion in projects being included, state officials intend to update it over time.
“Many more projects will be added in the coming months, as funding opportunities become grant awards and as formula funds become specific projects,” reads the dashboard. “By reaching communities across Connecticut – including rural communities and historically underserved populations – the law makes critical investments that will improve the lives of Connecticut residents and position the state for success.”
Of the $3.7 billion mapped on the dashboard, a little over $2 billion, or about 54% of the mapped funds, were granted for rail projects, and approximately $1.28 billion, or about 35%, were granted for roads, bridges and other major projects. The funding accounted for other categories was minuscule in comparison; the categories of ports and waterways, public transport projects, and environmental remediation projects each received 2% of the funds respectively, while the categories of airports and federal aviation, clean energy and power projects, water, environmental resilience projects, safety projects and two miscellaneous projects, received less than 2% of the funds respectively.
In total, 497 BIL-funded projects focus on transportation, 53 are climate-related, two are broadband-related, and another two are listed as “other”; one “other” item is funding for the instruction of smart manufacturing college courses, and another is for a fish-passage project in Naugatuck Valley.
When looking at a project-by-project breakdown of the funds, the state’s five biggest items are all rail-related projects. The single largest recipient of federal funds is the replacement of the Connecticut River Bridge ($826.65 million). Coming in second place is the replacement of the Norwalk River Bridge ($465 million), third is the Devon Bridge replacement in Milford ($245.92 million), fourth is the repair of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in Groton ($158 million) and fifth is the New Haven Line Power Improvement Program ($122.8 million).
As for the geographic breakdown of BIL spending, the majority of projects on the dashboard are located in Connecticut’s largest metropolitan areas. Hartford was the area with the most BIL-funded projects, having 22. Rounding out the top five are Norwalk, with 21 projects, Stamford, with 20, New Haven, with 18, and Waterbury, with 17.
Despite the concentration of projects in cities, the vast majority of Connecticut’s counties received BIL funding for at least one project. Only the towns of North Branford, Orange, Woodbridge, Ansonia, Bethany, Beacon Falls, Prospect, Wolcott, New Hartford and Canaan had zero BIL-funded projects mapped.
Tiffany Thiele, Director of Communications for the state’s Department of Revenue Services, noted the limitations of the mapping however, stating that some multi-community projects have not yet been represented by the dashboard.
“The current data map does not include an exhaustive list of BIL/IIJA Projects and allocations,” said Thiele. “It contains projects that are easy to map with available data. Multi-town or regional projects are not currently on the data map. We are continuously updating the data story as more projects become mappable.”