Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee announced Wednesday that new lanes are going to be added to improve traffic patterns on the troubled Washington Bridge.
The plans are aimed at improving travel time on Interstate 195 and alleviating congestion leading up to the Washington Bridge.
One lane will be added in each direction on the bridge, state officials said. The eastbound span has been carrying two lanes of traffic in both directions of Interstate 195 since mid-December. The bridge will now be reconfigured for three lanes in each direction.
Each direction will have two 10-foot wide lanes and one 11-foot lane. Trucks will be restricted to the 11-foot lane.
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"Rhode Island remains committed to addressing concerns at the Washington Bridge and providing relief to drivers and travelers," McKee said in a statement.
Work will begin on Monday, Feb. 26 with design and ordering materials, followed by construction to move the start of the bypass lanes in East Providence about 3,000 feet west of their current location.
Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti Jr. said the work to change the traffic pattern is expected to take about eight weeks.
The westbound side of the Washington Bridge was shut down on Dec. 11 because of a "critical failure of some bridge components." The bridge carries Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River from Providence to East Providence and serves as a key gateway to Rhode Island's largest city. It carries close to 100,000 vehicles every day.
There are seven independent engineering firms looking into the bridge and whether it needs to be replaced. The full report is expected at the end of the month or early March.
"We know that people want to hear what happened, but they also want to hear what are we going to do to fix it?," McKee said last week.
New defects found on the bridge in January were described for the first time at the statehouse oversight hearing last week. Those problems included "voids" and "cracking with unsound concrete."
As of early Feburary, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation had already paid nearly $900,000 in costs related to the Washington Bridge closure, according to WJAR. And that doesn't even include additional costs incurred during the first two months of the shutdown.
