By CHRIS GAROFOLO / Reformer Staff
BRATTLEBORO — One of the busiest roads from Brattleboro to Putney will receive a significant amount of funding if the Legislature moves forward with the Senate Transportation Committee recommendations.
Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, said the committee has included $5.7 million to improve the infrastructure along Route 5 (also known as Putney Road in Brattleboro) sometime this summer.
“This is what we need. We can’t expect to grow our businesses and serve our citizens if you can’t get from there to here, and [the road] is getting that bad,” said Shumlin. “It’s time for action, and we got it.”
The Senate measure would reshape and repave Route 5 from Park Place near the Brattleboro Common to downtown Putney.
Calling the road worse than the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, Shumlin pushed for the funding in the transportation committee and expects to bring the measure before the entire Senate today or Wednesday.
“This is a really important project,” he said. “Our roads look like we’re living in a developing country.”
The news from the Senate committee comes less than a month after Putney received $300,000 through community enhancement grants to rehabilitate the sidewalks from its Town Hall to the Putney Co-op.
In late March, Brattleboro learned the town will receive roughly $8 million for a 8.6 mile repaving project from Exit 1 of Interstate 91 to the Dummerston town line.
This article appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer
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