by Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current
December 11, 2025
Mitchell Check Jr. had just gotten off the phone after ordering a new shipment of white carnations for his family’s Taunton Avenue flower shop in East Providence Wednesday morning when he was asked how business has been going.
“Things haven’t been horrible, but they haven’t been better,” said Check, who admits to pushing 70 but is not yet ready to retire from running his shop a block away from the Washington Bridge off-ramp.
It’s the same resigned outlook shared by many who live and work in the city at the epicenter of a commuter crisis that began two years ago Thursday. On Dec. 11, 2023, state officials suddenly closed the westbound lanes of Interstate 195 on the Washington Bridge after contracted engineers discovered broken anchor rods that put the highway connecting Providence and East Providence at risk of collapse.
At the time, the westbound bridge over the Seekonk River carried over 90,000 vehicles a day. That estimate has fallen to around 70,000 vehicles using the converted lanes on the eastbound bridge as of November 2025, according to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s (RIDOT) monthly traffic volume report.
The westbound bridge has been completely demolished, although Gov. Dan McKee’s announcement last week that the demolition finished 10 days ahead of schedule underwhelmed the public.
“OK, that doesn’t get us over the water,” Rep. Matthew Dawson, an East Providence Democrat, said of McKee’s Dec. 5 announcement that contractor Aetna Bridge Co. had officially razed the substructure ahead of the Dec. 15 deadline set by a second reconstruction timeline. (The first timeline to reconstruct the westbound bridge fizzled after no bids were submitted to the state’s original request for proposals.)
“Society has figured out it’s the way they’re going to live their lives,” Dawson said. “And you have to be that way because there’s no end in sight.”
On the contrary, green signs on either side of the existing eastbound bridge say the project to replace the westbound bridge is “on time” and “on budget” with an estimated completion date of November 2028. That timeline was established under the timeline set in the $427 million contract awarded to Chicago-based Walsh Construction in June.
The official narrative is that Walsh is now in the process of mobilizing equipment and crews, securing permits, coordinating utility work, and advancing the new bridge’s design. The start of actual construction is dependent on finalizing design, steel fabrication, and the approval of the pending environmental permits, RIDOT spokesperson Charles St. Martin confirmed in an email.
“We’re anticipating that work being active next summer,” St. Martin said of the start of the construction phase of the bridge’s substructure.
McKee was famously absent from the very first press conference, leaving RIDOT Director Peter Alviti Jr. alone to deliver the bad news about announcing the highway’s abrupt closure right in the middle of the afternoon commute. Since then, McKee’s job approval rating has been stuck in low gear over his administration’s handling of the bridge.
The governor has no public events scheduled for the two-year anniversary of the closure. But he did issue a statement to Rhode Island Current stating he appreciates the public’s patience as a new bridge is constructed — a message that has been echoed by electronic signs along Interstate 195.
“The state has secured one of the top-rated design-build companies in the country to build a new bridge — one that will use proven construction methods, meet all modern safety standards, and improve traffic flow,” McKee said. “We have a completion timeline of November 2028, which is actually two years sooner than the new Maryland bridge to which ours had been compared in the past. Demolition has been completed safely and on time, and preparatory work is already happening on the bridge rebuild.”
“This is all good news, but that does not minimize the frustration the public has experienced during this time,” he continued. “The most frustrating part of this process for me, as governor, had been earlier efforts to repair a bridge that we later learned was unrepairable. As I have said before, my administration is holding the responsible parties accountable.”
The state is in the midst of suing the 13 firms that had previously worked on the bridge over the last two decades. That case is scheduled to go to trial in late 2027.
Society has figured out it’s the way they’re going to live their lives. And you have to be that way because there’s no end in sight.
– Rep. Matthew Dawson, an East Providence Democrat
East Providence Mayor Bob DaSilva says he feels more optimistic about the state of his city now compared to the first week after the bridge closed — when gridlock overwhelmed local streets in East Providence and up to the Massachusetts line on Interstate 195.
“It was something out of a weird movie that I never want to see again,” DaSilva said. “It was a nightmare.”
Four days after the bridge’s closure, RIDOT opened up a two-lane bypass on the existing eastbound bridge to get traffic flowing over the Seekonk River once again. In April 2024, three lanes of travel over both directions of the eastbound bridge.
DaSilva said he believes commuters have since adjusted and that fewer backups are happening on the highway.
“It’s not perfect,” DaSilva said. “But all and all, I travel over that bridge every day and I’m getting through with minimal slowdowns — it seems to have a better pace than it was before.”
That’s not Check’s experience.
“I have to have my drivers back by 2 o’clock or they’re stuck in traffic for an hour,” he said. “And if they’re coming in from Warwick, Coventry, East Greenwich — they’re stuck until God knows when.”
DaSilva said he expects “much smoother traffic” once the new westbound bridge is complete.
The state’s plan for the new bridge calls for five widened lanes of travel over the new bridge, along with an on-ramp from Gano Street in Providence and a new offramp to Waterfront Drive in East Providence. The original bridge had four lanes.
“The end result will be a much better flow of traffic and, God willing, a better piece of mind for travelers heading through the area,” DaSilva said.
Skepticism still remains from those on the front lines of the closure.
Susan Pascale-Frechette, owner of Pods Swimming, a youth swimming school on Commercial Way, said timelines often don’t go as expected and will believe the commuter crisis will end once that new bridge is finally up.
“Time will tell,” she said.
Reed Lappin of East Providence’s Riverside neighborhood had fewer complaints about bridge traffic when approached at Cafe Zara down Taunton Avenue. Originally from Boston, Lappin said he’s used to seeing worse.
“You just bear with it,” he said.
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- 9:32 am Updated a quote by Susan Pascale-Frechette, owner of Pods Swimming.
Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.
