City officials on Thursday joined with a White House staffer to discuss various federally funded infrastructure improvements intended to better connect Tucson communities.
Tom Perez, White House director of the office of intergovernmental affairs, met with Mayor Regina Romero, city councilmember Lane Santa Cruz and other city officials at Pima Community College’s Desert Vista Campus to talk about projects with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.
One of these is a 500-foot footbridge over Interstate 19, on the city’s southside. When originally announced in February 2023, the city received a $900,000 grant to begin the project.
The footbridge will connect West Nebraska Street, the Nebraska Street Bicycle Boulevard and residents east of the interstate to Tucson Spectrum and the Chuck Huckelberry Loop, the 137-mile regional bike-and-pedestrian path network.
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Sam Credio, director of the city’s Department of Transportation and Mobility, said the department is going through “the grant obligation process,” and that the design and planning phase will likely last about 12 months.
The Nebraska Street bridge will be implemented along the route of a new “Airport Wash Greenway,” Credio said, which will connect The Loop through a bike greenway to near the Tucson International Airport.
The project is not yet funded for construction, and the city will likely seek federal dollars for the $5 million to $7.5 million project, he said Thursday.
Funding for the footbridge was part of the first round of grants that came out of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Reconnecting Communities program, which is set to fund $1 billion worth of infrastructure projects across the country through the 2025-2026 fiscal year.
Tuesday’s roundtable also highlighted some of the federal investments that have cropped up locally in recent years, like the $5.4 million urban forestry grant Tucson received for its Tucson Million Trees campaign, as well as the $2.5 million federal grant the city received to construct the Blacklidge Bicycle Boulevard.
When Perez last visited Tucson, Mayor Romero provided an update to the 22nd Street bridge project, saying in February that the bridge was about two years away. Tucson had received a $25 million grant for the project from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and in November of last year, the project was put on hold.
Thursday, Romero said that after continuing in community engagement efforts, “we now are ready to kick off the construction process” for the project.
Later in the afternoon, Perez met with Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) executive director Mayra Macías for another roundtable to discuss the Administration’s recent immigration actions.