Howard and Son Meats is located along a section of Ridge Road in Munster that will receive safety upgrades and a walking path, thanks to a $17.1 million grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
Photo provided by city of Munster
MUNSTER — In just five years, more than 600 vehicle crashes occurred on a 1.3-mile stretch of road running through downtown Munster. More than 10% of those resulted in an injury.
Now, that section of Ridge Road is set for a total overhaul thanks to a $17.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The funding will not only pay for road improvements, but also a 10-footwide multiuse path, 250 new trees and the installation of new landscaping and pedestrian seating.
Officials have been planning for the improvement for years, but the money wasn’t there to make it a reality until now, City Manager Dustin Anderson said.
“We would have been doing this by dribs and drabs for years had it not been for the grant,” he said.
The project in Munster is just one of hundreds across Indiana that have received funding through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure spending across the nation.
Two years later, that money has started to funnel into Indiana. At least $4.6 billion has been announced to help pay for over 200 specific projects.
Over $3 billion of that money will be invested in transportation upgrades to roads, bridges, airports, public transit and ports. The White House estimates Indiana will receive $7 billion over five years in annual road formula funding alone, representing a 30% increase to that line item in the Indiana Department of Transportation’s budget.
That money will be critical to improving the state’s aging infrastructure, which includes over 1,100 bridges and nearly 5,500 miles of highway rated in poor condition.
Since 2011, commute times have increased by 4.4% in Indiana, and each driver on average pays $638 per year in costs due to driving on roads in need of repair, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
One of the largest single infrastructure projects announced so far is an $8.1 million improvement to the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railway Corp.’s railroads, which owns lines running through Logansport and Kokomo.
The project will increase capacity to stage and store railcars, as well as return the track to a state of good repair along a corridor that serves agricultural customers in rural areas of Indiana and Illinois.
Gov. Eric Holcomb also announced in August that Indiana and Kentucky were jointly applying for $623 million from infrastructure funding to build the Interstate 69 Ohio River Crossing project between Evansville and Henderson, Kentucky.
The bridge in Evansville is one of the final checkboxes to cross off in the quest to finish I-69 in Indiana.
For many communities, the benefits of the infrastructure bill won’t be a road or bridge project. Across the state, millions of dollars are being poured into projects that will improve drinking water, clean up polluted sites and cut down on energy consumption.
That’s the case at Northwestern Wayne Schools north of Richmond, which received $2.4 million to help purchase six electric buses and build two charging stations.
Superintendent Matthew Hicks said the district was able to buy the $425,000 buses for just $80,000, saving money that’s now being used on upgrades to its aging school building. The new EVs should also cut down on fuel costs.
“I mean, I’m a recovering language arts teacher, and that math is pretty easy even for a guy like me,” he said.
Outside of school districts, the bill has allocated $36 million over two years to build out a network of EV chargers across the state as more battery- powered vehicles hit the road.
Expanding high-speed internet to rural parts of the state received a major funding boost from the infrastructure bill. Indiana has so far received $861 million for broadband buildouts.
The White House said it is working with internet providers to offer high-speed plans that are fully covered by the federal Affordable Connectivity Program, meaning most eligible households can get high-speed internet for free. In Indiana, about 389,000 households are enrolled in the program, with more signing up every day.
Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. secretary of transportation and former mayor of South Bend, in the fall told a group of union workers in Indianapolis the unprecedented investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will boost the economy across multiple sectors.
“What we’re stimulating the private sector to do and what we are funding in the public sector will test the productive capacity of this country,” he said.
“(That’s) from the raw materials themselves to, most of all, the skills and the readiness of the workforce that are going to shape those materials into the factories and the roads and the bridges and airports that we’re going to be counting on for the rest of our lives.”
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed the U.S. Senate by a bipartisan vote of 69-30 in August 2021, followed in November of that year with passage in the U.S. House on a vote of 228-206.
Votes from Indiana’s congressional delegation was along party lines. U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, a Republican, criticized the legislation.
“This infrastructure bill is full of pork and carve-outs for lobbyists, isn’t paid for according to nonpartisan analysis, and is linked to the extreme left’s $3.5 trillion inflation bomb,” he said in a statement at the time.
© 2025 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.