$956M in Federal Grants Coming for $2.1B Sagamore Bridge Project at Cape Cod

Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s $2.1 billion plan to replace the 90-year-old Cape Cod Bridges has reached another milestone with Governor Maura Healey announcing a new round of federal funding.

The Massachusetts DOT will get $956 million in federal grants for the future 1,400-foot Sagamore Bridge, and the Federal Highway Administration is expected to deliver another $371 million in grants this month. Healey also announced the state will release the request for proposals for the project’s design-build contract.

MassDOT expects final proposals to be submitted in May, followed by a public bid opening in July. Construction is expected to begin in Winter 2027.

The southbound bridge span is scheduled to float in around Fall 2031, and the current bridge will be demolished in Winter 2033. Traffic is expected to open on the new bridge in 2033, and all work on the estimated $2.1 billion project is expected to finish by 2036.

The Sagamore Bridge and its southern counterpart, the 2,400-foot-long Bourne Bridge, are the main access between the Cape Cod peninsula and the mainland. The Bourne Bridge is also set for full replacement as part of the state’s $4.5 billion Cape Cod Bridges Project.

Both bridges, which each carry four lanes of traffic, are characterized by MassDOT as structurally deficient, functionally obsolete and close to the end of their usable lives. Each will be replaced by an arched twin-bridge structure to improve safety and traffic operations, as well as allow construction to be completed in stages to avoid long-term lane closures.

Separating traffic in each direction to its own bridge will, according to MassDOT, reduce the risk of head-on and sideswipe crashes. Other improvements include wider lanes, left and right shoulders, updated signs and pavement markings, and an auxiliary lane for drivers entering from or exiting onto local roads.

The new bridges will also address pedestrians and bicyclists with safer pathways, a new loop trail between the bridges, improved connections to local roads and multimodal trails, and barrier-separated shared-use paths. 

Built in 1933, the steel-arch Sagamore and Bourne bridges replaced the two original electrically operated, cantilever bridges that provided the first crossings over the Cape Cod Canal after its opening in 1914.

Both bridges are owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but they will be under MassDOT control after they are replaced.