A statement from Gov. Dan McKee (D) noted that the 18-month removal of the bridge deck and superstructure had been carried out with numerous environmental precautions, including strategically positioning support barges and turbidity curtains, which will remain in place until post-demolition inspections are completed. RIDOT also installed sensors to monitor noise, dust and vibration levels during the process, the statement added.

While no start date for the replacement span’s 25-month construction phase has been announced, RIDOT says the project team has been performing design, soil sampling, geographic surveys, permit applications and ordering of materials over the past several months. Since the westbound span’s closure, the temporarily reconfigured 25-year-old eastbound span has been handling two-way traffic until a replacement is built. RIDOT has said the new bridge will be open to traffic in November 2028.

“The deteriorating condition…was clear,” the report says. 

Swirling Controversy

Controversy has surrounded RIDOT and the Washington Bridge almost from the moment the bridge was shut down in December 2023.

A 2024 forensic engineering audit performed by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. (WJE), determined that the deteriorated tie-rod fractures had resulted from advanced corrosion coupled with decades of deficient inspections and poor maintenance work. The report also noted “a lack of toughness of the original high-strength rod materials,” which, though based on the standards applicable at the time of construction, “present greater risk than those that comply with modern standards.”

The WJE report added that the bridge’s “clear” deteriorating condition failed to spur an appropriate response. “Program managers, bridge inspectors, and designers should have and could have been aware” of the developing problems, the report said.

“Given experience within the industry with poorly grouted post-tensioning systems on other bridges,” auditors concluded, “more attention should have been given to signs of continuing cracking in the beams along the tendons, exposure of post-tensioning anchorages, and advanced deterioration of cantilever beam ends.”  Although a 1996-98 rehabilitation of the span included retrofit grouting of the tendons, the report noted, “it is not clear that all voids had been treated or that the treatment was 100% effective.”

To prevent similar types of events from occurring in the future, the WJE audit recommended that RIDOT conduct a review of structures that could be considered complex to identify critical elements, and “consider establishing specific agency defined elements (ADEs) to ensure that the elements are properly inspected/addressed with each applicable inspection.”

Another recommendation calls for RIDOT to review its processes for prioritizing and following up on work recommendations provided in inspection reports.

In August 2024 RIDOT filed a breach of contract and negligence complaint against 13 engineers and contractors that had inspected or performed work on the Washington Bridge in the last decade. The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in late 2027.

Meanwhile, RIDOT officials have repeatedly defended the agency’s project management approaches to state legislators while citing the pending litigation to sidestep questions about issues that contributed to the Washington Bridge closure or whether it was carrying out WJE’s recommendations. The criticism intensified when it was learned that the state’s attorney general had delayed public release of the WJE report for more than a year on the advice of the state’s legal team until portions were leaked on social media this past September.