PROVIDENCE – State transportation officials have awarded a $625 million contract to three companies that will oversee a project to remove and repair 15 bridges along the Interstate 95 corridor.
In August, the R.I. Department of Transportation announced that it had selected Skanska, McCourt Construction and AETNA Bridge Co. to oversee the design-build project along the Providence-Cranston-Warwick corridor of I-95.
Construction started that month, and will "be substantially complete" by August 2030, Sweden-based Skanska said in an announcement on Friday. The state has until 2031 to finish the project.
The project is slated to cost $779 million total, according to RIDOT, with the project offset by $251 million in federal Bridge Investment Program funding.
Construction does not overlap with the Washington Bridge removal and replacement, with state officials having applied for the BIP grant prior to the westbound bridge's emergency closure last December. The funding marked RIDOT's largest federal grant date.
Aetna Bridge, one of the three companies working on the project, was among the 13 companies that the state named in a lawsuit alleging inadequate notice of structural issues on the Washington Bridge.
Rhode Island will contribute a $62.75 million match for the BIP award and will also draw from $411.8 million in Statewide Transportation Improvement Program dollars; $42.76 million in reallocated funds; and a $10.69 million state match for reallocated funds, RIDOT spokesperson Charles St. Martin III told PBN in August.
St. Martin said that the project will also facilitate more green spaces and the creation of a bike path along a newly constructed boulevard.
Under the I-95 project, the three selected companies will remove 15 bridges rated as being in poor or fair-to-poor condition. Of those bridges, 12 will be replaced, while another three will be removed amid other roadway realignments.
The impacted corridor carries around 185,000 vehicles daily, according to state data, including about 9,000 trucks and other heavy freight vehicles.
The project will ultimately eliminate "three of the top 5 most-traveled, structurally deficient bridges in that state," Skanska detailed; reduce the number of poorly rated bridges in the state by 7.6%; remove permit restrictions on most truck freight and create general improvements to freight traffic flow.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
