The first completed portion of the Interstate 195 relocation project is on track to open to the public later this year, a R.I. Department of Transportation spokesman said last week.
The $610 million project, dubbed the Iway, will see its first portion come online in late 2007 when the ramp connecting I-195 East and Interstate 95 North, said agency spokesman Charles St. Martin. Project contractor Cardi Corp. finished pouring the concrete for the ramp in June.
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The agency is also seeing progress on the ramp connecting I-195 West and I-95 South, Martin said.
The work included the installation of steel beams weighing more than 100 tons and 22 tub girders, which varied in size from 34 to 223 tons.
The ramp will be 50 feet wide and be covered by “deck pans” of steel.
For the department, the progress on the ramps means that the end is in sight for a project that was first planned in the early 1990s. St. Martin said that DOT is also pleased that drivers can finally see the materialization of portions of the much-hyped highway relocation.
“Now that you have all of these elevated sections, motorists … can get a better sense of what it looks like beyond a drawing,” St. Martin said, adding that there will be “a lot of changes in the next couple of years as it comes together.”
Presently, the department is anticipating that construction of the new portions of I-195 will be completed by the end of 2009. Demolition of the existing portion of highway should begin the following year, with 2012 being the projected finish date.
The relocation of I-195 is slated to create new exits while eliminating some existing ones. In terms of westbound traffic, Exit 2, which previously dumped motorists onto South Main Street, will be moved slightly to the west and connect to Wickenden Street. Exit 3, the Gano Street exit, is slated to remain the same, St. Martin said. However, Exit 1, connecting to downtown, will cease to exist.
The split between I-95’s north- and southbound lanes will still exist where I-195 ends, St. Martin said. A new exit off the ramp connecting to I-95 North will dump out on Point Street and connect to a northbound service road.
For the southbound lanes, the exit that currently takes drivers to Rhode Island Hospital will be eliminated. In its place, a new off-ramp will connect to Borden Street and Eddy Street.
On I-195 East, Exits 1, 2 and 3 will all be eliminated by the relocation. A new exit will take motorists to the area of India Point Park. Because of the elimination of the existing exits, St. Martin said, several of the roads in that area are being rebuilt and transformed from one-way streets to two-way streets.
Once completed, the new portion of the highway will replace a stretch of road that was built in the 1950s. Originally slated to carry about 75,000 cars per day, the 1.5-mile stretch of road from the beginning of I-195 to the Washington Bridge has seen an average of 160,000 cars travel on it per day.
Aside from relieving an overworked road and creating a better flow of traffic at the onset of I-195, the project also has another highly touted benefit – the opening up of land in the area where the existing highway sits – a total of about 35 acres on both sides of the Providence River.
St. Martin said last week that the department is also looking at the sale of that land as a way to alleviate the cost of the highway relocation.
“There could be some revenue there that could go back into the project,” St. Martin said.
