By ADAM ZANGARI

Friday was a very transportation-heavy morning at the Community College of Rhode Island, as college, city and state officials celebrated the opening of four modernized bus stops at the Knight Campus.

The stops are directly outside the campus main academic building. The $1.6 million project was funded by a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Bus and Bus Facilities grant, according to the office of Sen. Jack Reed.

A veritable who’s who of Rhode Island and Warwick politicians showed up to the college, with Reed and Gov. Dan McKee joined by Speaker of the House Joe Shekarchi, Treasury Secretary James Diossa, Mayor Frank Picozzi, State Sen. Matthew LaMountain, State Reps. Joseph Solomon, Jr. and Tom Noret and Warwick City Councilmen William Foley, Jim McElroy and Steve McAllister.

Reed noted a recent groundbreaking at the Pawtucket-Central Falls Train Station, opened last year, as proof of the state’s commitment to public transportation. That, he said, tied closely with education.

“Making higher education accessible — everyone talks about that, but they usually mean making the resources available for tuition, et cetera,” Reed said. “Another aspect of making college accessible is being able to get there, and this is going to help lots of students, particularly those from middle- and low-income families, get here on time to do their studies.”

McKee, who started the Learn365RI program as governor, said the new stops would be a major boon to CCRI students and make sure that more Rhode Islanders could receive a college education.

“It’s really important that we create access to our universities, our community college here, to make sure people can get here, so they can participate in the real learning experiences that CCRI provides under the leadership of [interim] President [Rosemary] Costigan,” McKee said.

The governor also said that the CCRI stops would provide a blueprint for future RIPTA bus stop projects throughout the state.

The stops themselves also include screens showing when the next buses will arrive as well as destinations, in addition to solar lighting.

“They’re a wonderful blend of modern technology, powered by an alternative energy source, and they’re also very aesthetically pleasing,” Picozzi said.

Those in attendance said that the stops would make transportation easier for CCRI’s students and faculty, and would give students one less thing to worry about as they head to their classes. 

“Here at CCRI, we know that access is everything,” Costigan said.

The Bridge

Minutes before the event began, the governor and congressional delegation announced that the state had received a $125,390,467 grant for the rebuilding of the westbound Washington Bridge from the federal government.

The funds came from the “mega grant” program within the National Infrastructure Project Assistance program created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. Reed said that the grant was a good start, but the state needs to secure more funding in the future.

“This mega grant of $125 million is a good down payment, but we’re going to continue, after thanking the Secretary, to urge that we receive additional funds,” Reed said.

McKee noted meetings that he had with Rhode Island’s delegation and Senior Advisor to the President Tom Perez as positive, and said that meetings on Thursday with his predecessor — Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo — and on Friday with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went well. The governor visited Washington, D.C. two weeks ago to meet with Perez and other federal officials to convince them to give Rhode Island grant funding for the bridge.

Those meetings, he said, would continue as the state looks for more funds for the replacement of the bridge.

McKee had initially asked the federal government for a $221 million grant. Though the state did not get that much, he said that the $125 million was still a win for Rhode Island, especially considering the percentage of the federal grant that the state is receiving.

“When you talk about a competitive grant — the section that we qualified for was around $850 million [split between different projects nationwide] — we got $125 million of that,” McKee said. “That’s a big win for Rhode Island, and it’s a vote of confidence that the Biden administration had in our office, as well as the state, around the ability to actually rebuild a bridge that we didn’t know was going to have to be taken down.”