Lanes will shift on Route 95 for bridge repair

PROVIDENCE — Lane shifts on Route 95 north start on Saturday as the Department of Transportation embarks on a $10.8 million project to reconstruct the bridge that takes the highway over Oxford Street.

Director Peter Alviti said the shifts, which will end in June, should only cause traffic delays for a few days as the 163,000 daily travelers get used to the new roadway. All traffic will shift to the left, but drivers won’t need to change lanes, Alviti said.

“Stay in your lane,” Alviti said, “and we should get you through it relatively easily.”

More lane shifts are expected after these end in June, Alviti said in a news conference at the DOT offices, with photographs of the bridge’s crumbling concrete displayed behind him. The project, which will replace the bridge’s superstructure and do other major rehabilitation, is slated to finish by September.

The Thurbers Avenue on-ramp will also have a yield sign, meaning traffic delays are expected for people on the ramp, Alviti said. Delays are also possible for people on Oxford Street.

Though the Oxford Street bridge isn’t structurally deficient, it is close to it, and within four or five years could have fallen into a more critical state of disrepair, Alviti said. By fixing problems now, rather than waiting until they become even bigger problems, the state will save money, Alviti said.

The Rhode Island Trucking Association president chided the DOT for fixing the Oxford Street bridge before other projects that were in more urgent need of repair.

“RIDOT continues to push forward non-essential projects like a $22-million pedestrian bridge and non-critical bridge replacements like Oxford while seemingly embracing a severe infrastructure crisis to perpetuate funding for its program,” trucking association president Christopher Maxwell said. “The unnecessary expense and inconvenience of Oxford on taxpayers and the traveling public exemplifies the longstanding lack of oversight and due diligence upon this agency.”

Alviti, meanwhile, chalked up the criticism to lingering gripes about the state’s truck tolling; new gantries started charging tractor-trailers in various places on Route 95 last year, prompting outrage and a federal lawsuit, since dismissed, from the trucking industry.

In fact, it’s better and more economical to use an “asset management” model, which looks to fix both structurally deficient and not structurally deficient bridges in the most efficient way possible, Alviti said. That contrasts with a “worst first” approach which, as its name suggestions, looks to prioritize the very most critical projects.

“The ‘worst-first’ approach is the old way of doing things,” Alviti said.