Arlington lands $7 million to fund transportation projects - Washington Business Journal:

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Arlington is preparing seven projectw that will be worth a totallof $7.6 million. The Surface Transportation Programprovides 80% of the funding for with the caveat that city fund the remaininf 20%, or $1.4 million, and that the projectss be under way by November. Those projects include $300,000 for a traffic light at Milton-Wilson Road and Airlinre Road; a $2.6 million expansion of Airlinw Road near anew McDonald’s currently unded construction; a railroad crossing at Milton-Wilson Road Northb budgeted at $1.3 million; and a $2.7 million expansion of Milton-Wilson Road South, which will give the road four lanee in some places and five lanex in others.
Another $350,000 project will createw a pedestrian and bike trail fromthe town’es middle school to a park near the high school. Therw will eventually be bike and pedestrian trails around all ofthe city’s Stimulus funds are paying for a $330,000 paving project on Airlinr Road and $75,000 for a pavinfg project on Chester Street. Ed Haley, town superintendenft for Arlington, says all of the projecte were planned in anticipation ofthe city’s The city is approaching a population of In 2004, there were 5,041 people in Haley says the city applied for fundingh for the projects througyh the STP program last hoping to get one of the projects funded through the .
The requirement was for the project s to be ready to begin by Novembe r or risk losingthe funding. “For a smalpl town with our budget, that probably put us 10 years aheac ofwhere we’d be if we had to fund it ourselves,” Haleu says. “You had to show them your budget so they could make sure you couldd do what you said you would do.” In addition to the funding being supplied to Bartlett is receiving $1.7 million in stimulus funding that is goin toward six different road improvement projects.
Wade Towles, deputty city engineer for Bartlett, says the city is funding $200,00o of $800,000 in STP projects that will build apedestriabn bridge, walking trail and a walkway from Highwayg 64 North to Highway 70 and Yale Road from Sycamorew View to Old Brownsville Towles says the city is waiting on approvakl from the state on the projects before it startsx accepting bids. Haley says Arlingtojn will start taking RFPs in July and will have the project under contractby September. With the Arlington stimulux projects, Arlington simply needed to show the projectxwere “shovel ready,” says Nisha president of LLC, which does planning and engineering work for Arlington.
Powersz says some work was alreadu being done onsmaller projects, but the opportunity was therse to get funding for more projects. “For a communityt this size to be able to do that was Powers says. Russell Wiseman, mayor of Arlington, says the city has long held the beliefv thatplanning long-term projectes is important to its growth. “Wee always want to have projects in waiting if we winthe lottery, which we certainlu did,” Wiseman says.
“We always want to be