Congressman Brendan Boyle is co-sponsoring federal legislation to repeal parts of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Act” and restore billions of dollars to Philadelphia’s Chinatown Stitch and other defunded transportation projects across the country.
Project Stitch would involve closing a section of the Vine Street Expressway between 10th and 13th streets and building a park there inspired by Chinese cultural traditions. It is intended to partially reverse disruption to the neighborhood caused by the widening of Vine Street in the 1950s and highway construction in the 1980s.
The Biden administration awarded the project two grants totaling $162 million, but most of the funds were recovered under a reconciliation bill signed by Trump in July. On Monday, Boyle visited the Crane Community Center, located next to the expressway, to meet with city and state transportation officials and discuss ways to move forward with the project.
He later said he was sponsoring the REPAIR Act (the Restoring Essential Public Access and Improving Resilient Infrastructure Act) to ensure Stitch and other projects across the country are fully funded.
“We’re here to say we’re not giving up on this project. This community has literally been fighting for decades to reconnect it and we’re not stopping there,” he said. “I am more confident than ever that we have a plan to use the funds that already exist that will help us survive so that we can fix at the federal level the funds that have been taken from us.”
The proposed federal legislation would spend $3 billion a year from 2027 to 2031 on transportation and infrastructure work. Boyle said this would include about $3 billion worth of projects that were canceled under the Reconciliation Act.
Decades of ups and downs
Community leaders have long dreamed of closing the portion of the downstream I-676/Vine Street expressway that cuts through the northern edge of the neighborhood.
Construction of the roadway required the demolition of many homes and businesses, forces students and other residents to regularly cross several lanes of traffic on Vine Street and hampers Chinatown’s northward expansion, they say.
“It is the river that cuts through our community and divides it, and because this community deserves it and needs it, we want to see this project happen and reunite our community,” John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), said at a press conference on Monday. “But this project is also about economic opportunity and development, and that’s really important for Chinatown.”
This restriction seemed likely to finally become a reality with the passage of the federal bipartisan infrastructure bill, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, in 2021.
The bill included the Reconnecting Communities pilot program, which was created specifically to address problems caused by highway construction that cut off communities from economic opportunity.
In 2022, Philadelphia received a $4 million federal grant for planning and engineering work on the Stitch Path, and in 2024 won a $159 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $3.2 billion Community Access and Equity Program (NAEP), city officials said.
Last August, designers commissioned by the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) unveiled a design for a two-section section of the proposed highway apex, stretching from just east of 10th Street to just east of 12th Street.
The project visualization showed a lush park with trees and landscape elements, a lawn with a covered square, a playground, a diminutive stream, a “moon gate” and a garden inspired by Chinese traditions, a food kiosk and toilets.
By then, however, Trump had signed a federal reconciliation bill that voided $9.4 billion in previously approved spending, including NAEP and other infrastructure projects, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies, food assistance, and a host of other programs.
“We have our ups and downs. We were delighted when the money was approved for the Chinatown Stitch project. We were devastated when the money disappeared,” Chin said. “That’s why we always persevere.”
The city retained $12 million in infrastructure law funds that were already obligated or legally committed to the project. It is being used for engineering design and other preparatory work and will last until February 2027, Boyle said.
Cross-party support was requested
This week, congressional Democrats introduced the Restoring Essential Public Access and Enhancing Resilient Infrastructure (REPAIR) Act, of which Boyle was a lead co-sponsor. It would restore $3 billion to NAEP and overall provide a budget of $3 billion a year for five years for road and infrastructure projects across the country, he said.
While Democratic and Republican lawmakers were unable to agree on other funding fixes, such as restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies, Boyle recalled the broad support for the original infrastructure bill and said he believed the FIX Act had a real chance of becoming law.
“I was there on the White House South Lawn. We had both Republican and Democratic speakers. We had over two-thirds of the vote in the United States Senate, including then-Republican leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell,” he said. “So we have already shown, just in recent years, that support for infrastructure can be bipartisan.”
Boyle met Monday morning with Chin, state Sen. Nikil Saval, council member Mark Squilla, OTIS deputy managing director Michael Carroll, a PennDOT official and others to assess the status of Chinatown Stitch and explore unspecified “additional funding sources,” he said.
“This is a project that is committed to the people who live in the community and what it means to them, and OTIS is unwavering in its mission to ensure that this project continues even after the money is taken away,” Squilla said after the meeting.
“We hope that by the time we are ready to act and have completed the planning process – and the funds obtained will allow us to reach a certain position – the bill will have been passed and therefore the funds will have been regenerated so that the project can move forward,” he said.
