U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stood in the middle of Fourth Avenue North in Birmingham on Wednesday morning to talk about federal funding to turn the one-way street into a two-way street to slow down traffic and restore a sense of community.

He also took a few moments to discuss the March 26 bridge collapse in Baltimore. The main spans of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Patapsco River collapsed after a bridge pier was struck by a container ship. Several road maintenance workers were killed.

“There continues to be shock and pain in Baltimore and around the whole country in the aftermath of the tragedy that took place one week ago yesterday,” Buttigieg said.

“We continue to mourn those construction workers that lost their lives. We’re going to work every day to deliver on President Biden’s promise that the administration will make sure Baltimore can recover.”

At that moment, a tornado siren sound in a monthly test. “It makes me feel at home to hear a tornado siren being tested,” said Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

The construction of Interstate 65 in the 1960s and turning Fourth Avenue North into a one-day street disrupted community and created barriers that kept people apart, disproportionately affecting Black neighborhoods and the historic Black business district, he said.

“It would be foolish to characterize that as a coincidence,” Buttigieg said.

“It’s about better infrastructure, and it’s about putting right things that have been done wrong in the past,” Buttigieg said.

“I know what this kind of transformation can mean because I’ve lived it as mayor of South Bend,” he said. “The symbolic resonance of doing it here is not lost on me.”

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, who joined Buttigieg in front of the Carver Theatre along with Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, announced last month that the City of Birmingham has been awarded a federal grant of more than $14.5 million to turn Fourth Avenue North into a two-way street.

The grant of $14,556,040 will come from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Neighborhood Access and Equity grant program to re-connect the historic Fourth Avenue Black Business District.

The city pledged $2 million toward the cost of the project.

The cost involves improving and changing signals at intersections with traffic lights.

Birmingham last year announced it had applied for federal funding to help turn the major one-way street downtown into a two-way street, which officials say will promote economic development and improve safety.

The Birmingham City Council in August approved a grant application seeking funding from the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program. Buttigieg came to Birmingham in 2022 to announce the $1 billion federal program aimed at reconnecting communities that were previously cut off from economic opportunities by transportation infrastructure.

The money will be used to convert Fourth Avenue North from a one-way street to a two-way street from 24th Street North to 9th Street North.

Fourth Avenue North moves traffic west on a one-way street starting from the U.S. Post Office at 24th Street through downtown, past the Harbert Center at 2019 Fourth Ave. North, through the historic Black business district that includes the Carver Theatre at 1631 Fourth Ave. North, on to the west side of Interstate 65.