Rocky Mount getting $3 million for downtown walking bridge over train tracks

It comes after WRAL News has reported on months of headaches in the area caused by stopped trains blocking off one side of downtown from the other.

Congressman GK Butterfield’s office announced the allocation alongside a number of projects he included in the $1.7 trillion federal spending package announced last week.

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Some in the community say the walking bridge can’t come soon enough.

“The freight trains especially, they stop in the middle of the tracks and they block off the streets where you can’t get through,” Rocky Mount resident Avery Staton said.

Since the start of the year, WRAL News has been reporting on freight trains stopping on the tracks in the middle of downtown Rocky Mount, making it nearly impossible to walk from one side to the other for hours at a time.

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The mayor says for an area the city is trying to invest in, that’s a problem.

“It is if you’re trying to conduct and engage in business downtown,” Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson said. “We want our merchants to be successful, we want our restaurants to be successful, anything we can do to make that happen is very important to the community and the city.”

This week, the city got a potential solution in Butterfield’s announcement.

“We’re just excited,” Roberson said. “It’s one of those things that we had hoped for, and we certainly asked our congressman to help us out.”

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Roberson told WRAL News the final site for the bridge hasn’t been chosen yet, and the city still needed to secure $1.5 million in additional funding for the bridge project, which was projected to cost a total of $5 million.

But the mayor hopeful the bridge would be built by the end of 2024.

Some residents say it’s a much-needed step to bring people into the downtown area, and help them move around once they get there.

“It’s a way to get from one side to the other without a train blocking the way, which sits there sometimes for hours,” Staton said. “That would be a very, very good idea.”