Almost one year to the day traffic was permanently halted on the westbound Washington Bridge, state officials announced they have narrowed down the choice of who will replace it to two finalists.

Vying for the state’s contract are the American Bridge-MLJ joint venture, a partnership between firms based respectively in Pennsylvania and New York, and Chicago-based Walsh Construction Company II, Gov. Dan McKee revealed at a State House press conference Tuesday. 

“This is good news, and it’s timely,” McKee said.

McKee was joined by Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) Director Peter Alviti, Jr. and East Providence Mayor Bob DaSilva for an hour-long press conference about the next steps for the span connecting East Providence to Providence.

State officials halted all traffic on the westbound section of Interstate 195 on Dec. 11, 2023, after engineers discovered broken anchor rods that put the Washington Bridge at risk of collapse. At the time, the bridge carried about 96,000 vehicles a day over the Seekonk River.

McKee’s administration struggled earlier in the year after an initial request for proposals to replace the bridge drew no proposals from any firm. State officials went back to the drawing board to assemble a request for information and a subsequent request for qualifications from would-be bidders. That delayed the timeline, but McKee portrayed the move as necessary to attract “highly-qualified” companies for the high-profile project.

American Bridge Co., of Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, most recently built the San Francisco Oakland Bay suspension bridge. The company’s bid partner, MLJ Contracting Corporation of Great Neck, New York, has worked on restoring the Brooklyn Bridge and was awarded a $79 million contract last June to construct the Port Authority Command Center at the World Trade Center.

The other finalist, Walsh Construction Company of Chicago, worked on the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge on Interstate 95 over the Quinnipiac River in New Haven, Connecticut, along with the Interstate 90 Westbound Innerbelt Bridge in Cleveland.

Four bidders in all

Four prospective bidders in all responded to the request for qualifications issued in mid-October.

Not chosen to advance were Halmar International LLC of New York and a joint venture of New York-based Skanska and Aetna Bridge Co. of Warwick. Aetna has the state’s nearly $100 million contract to demolish the westbound bridge.

Alviti told reporters the two finalists will now start meeting with RIDOT officials to develop the scope of the project. The next step will be to formally issue a request for proposals, scheduled for Dec. 18. 

Asked what the new timeline and expected cost for a new bridge will be, Alviti said those details will come out of  the bidding process. 

Estimates last May pegged the rebuild cost at $368 million and was scheduled to be done by 2026 — a timeline both Alviti and McKee acknowledged was too aggressive and likely led to the lack of bids at the time.

“I’m not going to make any predictions on what these companies are capable of,” Alviti said Tuesday. “Let’s wait and see.”

RIDOT expects to award a final contract by June 6, Alviti said.

Time is money, so even the loser wins

The losing finalist will receive $1.75 million to cover costs associated with bidding on the project — an incentive state officials placed to generate interest in the latest bidding process.

Aetna began demolishing the bridge in September, but work was paused for nearly a month to allow state investigators to document its condition as part of the state’s lawsuit against 13 firms that previously worked on it. Work resumed on Oct. 11 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.

“It’s been a long road with more than a few bumps in it,” Alviti said. “Ultimately, the people of Rhode Island will have a brand new bridge that will be completely safe, it will be efficient, and it will last 100 years.”

McKee also used Tuesday’s press conference to reflect on the year since phones across Rhode Island blared with an emergency alert announcing the Washington Bridge’s closure — during afternoon rush hour no less. The governor apologized for the inconvenience the commuter crisis caused.

“I know that, and I’m sorry you had to go through this, but it was necessary,” McKee said.

“Like you, I certainly wish I had known sooner than Dec. 11 that the bridge had serious issues,” he added. “Like you, I wish I had known right away that no amount of repair work would be enough to salvage the existing bridge.”

As the westbound bridge closed, gridlock immediately overwhelmed the streets of East Providence. But since the state opened three lanes of travel over both directions of the eastbound bridge in April, Mayor DaSilva downplayed the impact on motorists.

“Traffic has begun to move through the city like it did before,” DaSilva said

McKee said he understands some of the criticism that’s been levied against his administration, but said some of it is unwarranted. He also maintained that no state employee deserved to be fired because of the bridge emergency.

“That might not be the answer that some people want,” McKee said. “They want to see heads rolling. But I’m not going to do that just because of the politics of it and the optics of it.”

Accountability, the governor argued, will come about from the state’s ongoing lawsuit officially filed Aug. 16. The state accuses the 13 defendants of a sweeping set of contract breaches and negligence over  decades when contractors failed to detect or report structural problems ahead of the bridge’s abrupt closure.

Defendants in October asked the Providence Superior Court to throw out the state’s lawsuit, claiming McKee’s administration is using the case to shift blame. Motion to dismiss are scheduled to be heard by Judge Brian Stern on Jan. 21, 2025. 

McKee, who last March promised a “day of reckoning” will come for taxpayers who have footed the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bridge work, said he’s confident the case will not be tossed.

“Just like we prevailed in court last week with the truck toll case, I believe our efforts to hold parties accountable for the bridge failure will be successful,” he said.

McKee was referring to the Dec. 6 decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that allows the state to reinstate its RhodeWorks program tolls for tractor trailers and other large semi trucks using state highways and bridges. The governor said he is still reviewing the decision and is planning to meet with legislative leaders about reactivating tolls across Rhode Island.