WHYY: Effort to cap I-95 through Wilmington gains momentum

Earlier this year, a group of state lawmakers from Wilmington urged Delaware’s federal delegation to support the idea of putting a cap on top of I-95 to reconnect city neighborhoods that were split in two by the highway’s construction decades ago.

On Monday, they got their wish.

U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware was joined by U.S. Sen Tom Carper and Congressman Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania at a roundtable discussion in Wilmington to talk about how federal money could repair the divide 95 has caused with construction of an urban park on top of the capped highway.

“Once in a generation do we have an opportunity to right a wrong, once,” Blunt Rochester said. “This is big, it’s sort of like all the stars aligned. We are now doing an infrastructure package, and all of this work has been put in. Now is the time for us to seize this moment.”

Both Blunt Rochester and Evans are co-lead sponsors of the $3 billion Reconnecting Communities bill which recently passed the House. In part, the measure will fund projects that “restore or improve connectivity, mobility, and access in disadvantaged and underserved communities.”