The Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) announced that it will reopen the Gano Street off-ramp (Exit 3) on I-195 West overnight tonight. It will be ready for traffic in time for the morning commute tomorrow.
The ramp will remain open as RIDOT conducts traffic studies of the immediate area as it develops a project to perform a much-needed rehabilitation of the nearby Washington Bridge. That project envisions a design that will offer better routes to the same destinations on the East Side of Providence while improving safety and traffic flow on I-195 West, which experiences lengthy delays each day.
The pending Washington Bridge project includes a new interchange leading directly to Waterfront Drive in East Providence. The project schedule will be coordinated with improvements at the Henderson Bridge which will tie in with Waterfront Drive, together providing an improved connection to the East Side. A preliminary traffic review found that two-thirds of traffic using the Gano Street exit is bound for destinations closer to the South Angell Street and Wayland Square areas – parts of the East Side directly connected to the Henderson Bridge.
RIDOT closed the Gano Street off-ramp in August 2018 for construction on the substructure of the Washington Bridge. The Department this week completed paving work on a section of Gano Street right at the base of the off-ramp. This is a separate $3.2 million project to improve the connection with Gano Street and India Street, and to develop a new bike path under the Washington Bridge that will connect the park to the Blackstone River Bikeway. The Gano Street project will be complete next summer.
RIDOT's Washington Bridge project represents a $70 million investment in the area. The Department is awaiting word on a $25 million federal BUILD grant application it submitted this summer and hopes to learn about this coming winter. The Henderson Bridge project represents another $88.5 million investment in the area, which includes $54.5 million of federal funds as part of a new spending law authored by Senator Jack Reed.
Construction of the two projects would be coordinated to minimize traffic disruptions for both highway and local traffic. Work on the Henderson Bridge is set to begin in Spring 2020 and will take approximately three years. A construction schedule for the Washington Bridge has not been determined.