After nearly three years of uncertainty, frustration and sometimes outright pessimism for East Bay Bike Path users and alternative transportation advocates, the tentative replacement of the trail’s two dilapidated river bridges in Barrington received a long-awaited commitment in September.
In a gathering at Police Cove Park in Barrington on Sept. 26, state and local officials announced the state’s plan to replace the two rail trail bridges spanning the Palmer and Warren rivers, a project with an estimated price tag of $24 million.
The announcement was long overdue for the bike path’s proponents.
“We’re delighted,” said Kathleen Gannon, chairperson of the Rhode Island Bike Coalition. “It’s an important route for cyclists for a lot of reasons.”
While a win for cyclists, the celebratory atmosphere underscores a yearslong period where some feared the bridges would never see new life, as R.I. Department of Transportation officials said the state did not have sufficient funding to guarantee the replacement.
A $48.5 million federal allocation awarded to Rhode Island for transportation infrastructure improvements in August pushed the bridge replacement project from hope to reality, according to RIDOT spokesperson Charles St. Martin III.
The project had also gained some momentum in March, receiving $5 million from a $229 million federal allocation to Rhode Island. And the state previously set aside another $10 million for the project, but at the time made no promises that the replacement project would move forward.
Following the latest infusion of federal dollars, the bike paths will return with a modern, more environmentally friendly structure, RIDOT says.
The design and engineering processes, which Aetna Bridge Co. in Warwick and Massachusetts-based Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. will oversee, will produce two bridges structurally distinct from the original crossings. The old bridges were built as part of the Providence, Warren and Bristol Railroad in the 1880s, and converted to accommodate bikeway users in the 1980s.
The design-build team will use prefabricated, modular truss bridges, meaning that sections of the bridge will be built off-site and then transported to the bike path for final installation.
With this method, bridges “are quicker to install and have less impact on the environment,” as this lightweight design requires smaller foundational elements and piers,” RIDOT says on the project webpage. “They also are easier structures to maintain, with a very long design life.”
The design will use two piers in the river, compared with the “hundreds of wood pilings that support the old bridges,” the department continues.
The project will not cause any other changes to the surrounding sections of the East Bay Bike Path, St. Martin said.
Aetna Bridge Co. did not respond to an interview request, and VHB Managing Director Justin Dufresne said the company cannot comment “as a consultant of RIDOT.”
In 2005, Aetna Bridge Co. replaced the roadway bridge over the Palmer River between Barrington and Warren, which runs parallel to the bike path.
Since the bridge closures, many say temporary detours have been less than ideal: initially, a crude detour directed cyclists to twice cross the busy Route 114 and walk their bikes over the sidewalk spanning each bridge.
This detour, which was widely criticized as dangerous and cumbersome, remained in effect until December 2021, when RIDOT opened two boardwalk-style pathways that widened the existing sidewalks on the north side of the road bridges.
But even with $2 million dedicated to the temporary, protected bikeways, the state did not commit to replacing the original bike bath bridges.
While an improvement over the original detour, Gannon will be glad to see the boardwalk-style bikeway over the road bridges phased out.
For one thing, the detour is unsightly, Gannon says, and “it’s really not well-constructed.”
While less dangerous than the initial detour, she says, cyclists still must navigate around sharp corners and telephone poles when entering and exiting the temporary detours.
“Someone wrapped the poles in padding,” Gannon said. “You know you have a bad infrastructure design when you need to pad them, and they’re just not up to any appropriate standard for riding.”
And the detours have a wider impact than inconveniencing recreational cyclists, Gannon says.
“We all are aware of the recreational use of the East Bay Bike Path, and that will continue to be an important reason people cycle there,” she said. “But I often think people overlook how important that is as a commuting route … from city to city and town to town, but also within towns.”
In a statement, RIDOT Director Peter Alviti Jr. said the department will use the recently announced federal funding “to first backfill the gap in the actual cost of the East Bay Bike Path bridges with $9 million so we can rebuild both bridges, and the remainder we will use for pavement preservation, a priority of Governor [Daniel J.] McKee.”
The state expects the design and permitting process to conclude by next spring and plans to release further details on the bridge design at that point. The project has a tentative completion date of 2025.
