A new stretch of the Henderson Bridge has opened to westbound traffic. If all goes according to plan, those traveling east, out of Providence, will follow suit on Monday. Other than smoother pavement, I’m not sure commuters will notice a big difference yet, but the new traffic patterns over on the Rumford side will take a little getting used to. I found it hard to sort things out on this morning’s visit to the Providence end at Paterson Street so I pulled up the illustration, seen below, from RIDOT’s project page, and I’m still confused. But it’s going to be good.
And I love that people are referring to the new span as the Red Bridge (and not the new New Red Bridge). This will confound newcomers and tourists in a way that hopefully makes us seem delightfully quirky. For clarity I will stick with Henderson for now, but I will be glad to help ease ‘Red Bridge’ into common local usage.
(Engineer and Rumford resident, George Henderson, was the designer of the 1969 span. With all due respect to the Henderson family, we need to move on.)
Here’s the RIDOT update from November 10:
Prior to opening the bridge, we plan to finish guardrail installation while continuing electrical work for new highway lighting and new directional and regulatory signage installations. We will also continue building the second half of the Massasoit Avenue roundabout and add waterproofing to the shared-use path portion of the bridge.
I guess. It just doesn’t look that far along, but they are working nights. WPRI has the latest.
This will be very cool when it’s done, certainly a treat for pedestrians and bicyclists.
