Editorial: This Silver Creek Bridge can't close

Posted 5/2/19

For weeks, the idea seemed laughable. Anyone with a lick of common sense knew the Rhode Island Department of Transportation couldn’t possibly close the Silver Creek bridge for months.

That …

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Editorial: This Silver Creek Bridge can't close

Posted

For weeks, the idea seemed laughable. Anyone with a lick of common sense knew the Rhode Island Department of Transportation couldn’t possibly close the Silver Creek bridge for months.

That would never happen.

For weeks, however, the rumors persisted. “The state is closing the bridge!” Some were even walking around town telling people “they” were planning to close the Mt. Hope Bridge.

Fortunately that turned out to be false, but the Silver Creek news is true. “They” — DOT engineers — are planing to close the bridge, tear it down and rebuild a new one. It will happen next summer, and it is predicted to last two to three months.

The idea still seems preposterous.

There are obvious challenges to maintaining, building and/or replacing bridges, and those who live in this area have seen and experienced all the solutions.

They’ve seen small bridges deteriorated so badly they were closed for years — and people learned to avoid them. They’ve seen bridges so vital the state built temporary bridges (that lasted a decade), as happened along Route 114 in Barrington and Warren. And they’ve seen some bridges so critical the state built new bridges off-site and installed them in two days, as happened along the East Shore Expressway in East Providence just last year.

They’ve never seen anything like what DOT proposes for Bristol in 2020.

The Silver Creek bridge is small, but critical, and its closing cannot be measured by any data analysis or traffic study.

A tiny span that most barely notice, the Silver Creek bridge takes motorists over a narrow creek that washes into Bristol Harbor. It provides the solitary passage for anyone traveling north-south, or south-north, on the west side of town, which happens to be home to the harbor, the entire downtown historic district, about 100 small businesses, nearly all the town’s restaurants, three schools and thousands of homes.

Anyone who lives, works or travels here regularly knows how critical that bridge is to everyday life in this community. When it floods, as it has done for years, the rest of Bristol gridlocks. Every major artery (there’s only one other!), plus most side streets feel the impact as motorists try every which way to avoid the traffic — and fail.

No one can accurately predict the impact of closing that bridge, but the folks who live and work here have the best feel for it — and they all agree that closing the bridge will be crippling to many aspects of everyday life. Yes, travel and commute times will increase dramatically. Yes, businesses will suffer irreperably. Yes, people will avoid coming downtown.

The state faces a daunting task: how to rebuild a bridge while thousands of people are driving on it. But this cannot be the plan. Bristol needs a better solution than this. This is not good enough.

2024 by East Bay Media Group

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Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.