PROVIDENCE − As he went about his work on Friday, a “young” as yet unnamed engineer working on the reconstruction of the Route 195 Washington Bridge noticed something unusual in the steel holding up the span.

He called over a supervisor and three days later on Monday afternoon the highway used by 90,000 drivers to cross the Seekonk River each day was suddenly closed, gridlocking the Providence metro area and severing the key connection between the east and west halves of the state.

Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion Jr. spent four hours and 32 minutes trying to get from Tiverton to a state Ethics Commission meeting in Providence. He didn’t make the meeting.

“It’s chaos,” Marion tweeted. “People are cutting though every street in EP desperately trying to find a way to a Henderson [Bridge] approach. The main thoroughfares are parking lots … More than 1.5 hours and moved about 200 feet.”

With weeks of traffic jams and travel delays on the horizon, Rhode Island leaders Tuesday scrambled to explain what happened and minimize the disruption as much as possible.

Gov. Dan McKee called it “an event that cannot be avoided and cannot be predicted.”

State Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti Jr. said “we averted a major catastrophe here.”

Morning commutes of a half hour or 45 minutes ballooned into two-hour, four-hour or even five-hour ordeals. The side streets in East Providence and parts of Providence’s East Side flooded with cars.

East Providence schools dismissed students early. School sports in some East Bay schools were canceled and La Salle Academy considered allowing East Bay students to attend class remotely.

After a lull in midday, traffic seized up again as the sun went down and the evening commute began. On traffic cameras, drivers were seen leaving their cars.

To restore the road connection between Providence and East Providence, the DOT is planning to build a temporary bypass that will allow two lanes of westbound Route 195 traffic to use two lanes of the eastbound span.

Alviti said he expects to open that temporary crossing within two weeks and is working to do it even sooner.

The repairs needed to reopen the westbound span are expected to take three months.

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of operation that we’re in right now,” Alviti said.

Severed rods from beams

The problem first spotted by the man Alviti called a “young engineer” is the failure of several foot-and-a-half long steel rods that anchor the span to its cantilever support beams.

The westbound span, which was built in 1968, was last inspected in July and at that time Alviti said there were no signs of damage to the eight rods that have now severed from the beams.

“If one pin goes, it can have a compounding effect on the other rods and that is what happened in this case,” Alviti said, adding that in addition to the pins there were “other deficiencies” to the structure occurring in a “cascading way.”

Asked why, if there was a threat of collapse, the DOT didn’t close the bridge Friday when the problems were first spotted, Alviti said “there’s a sequence of analysis that has to take place before you make the decision to close a bridge to 90,000 people a day who use it.”

A team of DOT engineers and outside consultants worked “night and day” through the weekend to write a full report on the condition of the bridge with the recommendation to close it, he said.

To make sure East Bay residents in need of medical care can get to Rhode Island Hospital, the DOT is creating a single emergency-only lane guarded by police on the strongest part of the westbound span that ambulances use.

Alviti said while individual ambulances should not pose a safety risk, buses or fire trucks are too heavy and will not be allowed on this emergency lane.

Since the closure, many Rhode Islanders have wondered why the state can’t build a quick temporary span like the one that opened 12 days after a bridge collapsed on Route 95 in Philadelphia.

Alviti said because that bridge collapsed over another roads, crews were able to simply fill in the void beneath the highway and pave over it. Filling in the Seekonk River and paving over it is not an option, he said.

What will RIers do during the shutdown?

The official Washington Bridge detour takes westbound drivers north along the Seekonk to the newly slimmed down Henderson Bridge and a new roundabout some drivers find confusing.

Afraid of getting stuck in the gridlock of that detour, many drivers began planning alternate routes north through Attleboro and Pawtucket or south through Aquidneck Island. However, the Newport Pell Bridge had previously been reduced to one lane for maintenance, resulting in long delays there.

Alviti said he is talking to the owner of a ferry about running 25-passenger commuter boat service from Bristol to Providence to try to ease traffic.

He said the state is also looking at ways to increase RIPTA service.

Years of repairs

If it seems like the Washington Bridge has been under construction for years, that’s because it has.

The eastbound span was reconstructed within the last 15 years, Alviti said, relieving any concerns it may have similar problems. (The bike path next to the bridge is also open and expected to see a bump in usage.)

Rhode Island began an initial phase of repairs to the westbound span’s substructure in 2017. In 2018 lane closures resulted in giant delays on I-195 with cars backed up well into Massachusetts and when asked about the problem then-Gov. Gina Raimondo said, “A traffic engineer I am not.” 

Because of the traffic nightmare, the DOT terminated work and a contract awarded to Cardi Corp., then began planning a major rehabilitation that began in 2021.

Cardi won the initial bid for the full rehabilitation project, but competitor Barletta Heavy Division sued, claiming Cardi was able to undercut other vendors using its inside knowledge with what it had already done in the first phase.

Federal highway officials also objected to the initial procurement and the DOT put it back out to bid with Barletta winning. Cardi sued but a judge ruled in the state’s favor.

It was not entirely clear Tuesday how much of the span was going to be repaired under the first phase of work, but Alviti said the scope of work did not include the pins at the center of the current problem.

The cost

Alviti said it was too soon to know how much extra the emergency closure and temporary work will add to the cost of the full reconstruction project, which had been estimated to cost $78 million and be completed in the summer of 2026.

The federal government typically picks up 80% of highway repair costs, which would put the state share at around $15 million. That doesn’t count any of the roughly $18 million spent on the aborted first phase.