On Friday night the North Broadway on-ramp leading to the Henderson Expressway, which connects East Providence to Providence’s East Side, will close.

It will never re-open. Not exactly.

For decades the Henderson Expressway has existed in a kind of civil engineering limbo; its very name an ironic reminder of an ambitious highway concept that never actually materialized, in the same vein as Route 37 that connects Cranston and Warwick.

The Henderson Expressway is, of course, not a real expressway. It can sort of look like one if you glance quickly to your right while traversing the bridge that goes over it on North Broadway as you pass south from Rumford into the center of the city. But it sputters out quickly, terminating at the Henderson Bridge to the west and reaching no further to the east.

The state’s intended plan — part of a roughly $40 million effort to transform the faux expressway into something more modern and sensible — continues this Friday, and commuters in the area should expect parts of those efforts to continue for the next couple of years.

Beginning on the evening of Nov. 13, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) will close off access to the ramp on North Broadway that funnels people onto the expressway towards the Henderson Bridge. It will remain closed until the area is transformed into a roundabout that enables access to a totally reimagined expressway.

“We have no plans to continue building the Henderson Expressway as a highway,” Charles St. Martin, spokesman for RIDOT, said in an interview on Tuesday. “So we decided, along with the city, that we were going to reconstruct the old expressway as more of a city boulevard…The roadway itself will be rebuilt, it will be landscaped. We’ll have sidewalks on both sides of it.

“It’s going to be more like a city street, essentially.”

The Henderson reimagining project is already well underway, with the removal of various structures in the area (originally built with the defunct expressway in mind) having occurred over the past couple of years; changes that ultimately resulted in what could fairly be described as a polarizing roundabout on Massasoit Avenue near the Henderson Bridge.

“Now we’re going to be removing the bridge on North Broadway and the ramp that’s there,” St. Martin said. “In its place will be a roundabout. So you’ll have a roundabout on the Henderson Bridge side and a roundabout on the North Broadway side.”

North Broadway, St. Martin clarified, will remain open to traffic on both sides during this work. Detour signage will be put in place to instruct commuters how to access the Henderson Bridge from the north and the south once the ramp is no longer accessible.

St. Martin said that, eventually, North Broadway will also have to undergo modifications to lower its elevation in order to connect it with the new roundabout and the new iteration of the expressway, but that work could occur in phases and would not necessarily require a full closure.

Regardless, that portion of the project is years away. St. Martin said the connection of North Broadway to the new infrastructure would be the final piece of the project puzzle, not expected to occur until the spring of 2029.

Nixed bike infrastructure leads to Pawtucket Ave. improvements

As first reported by WPRI in April, RIDOT faced an unexpected curveball at the onset of the second Trump Administration in January of 2025.

The original plan for the project, which is receiving a large chunk of its funding from a $25 million federal RAISE grant, included large-scale improvements to bicycling infrastructure in the area, including bike lanes expanding outwards from the project area and a purposeful link between the East Bay Bike Path and the Blackstone River Bikeway.

Those plans were apparently met with distaste from the new administration, as RIDOT was revealed to have altered the project scope — foregoing the cycling improvements and re-allocating those funds towards improvements on Pawtucket Avenue.

Paving on Pawtucket Avenue, going south from Warren Avenue where it meets Veterans Memorial Parkway, commenced and concluded this summer. St. Martin said that phase two of that paving — going north from Warren Avenue, past the high school, and ceasing at Marietta Street — will begin and conclude in the fall of 2027.

Additionally, a notoriously dangerous intersection at Pawtucket and Warren Avenues will get some attention. The traffic signal will be replaced and the lanes widened to allow for a third, dedicated left-turn-only lane on either side of Pawtucket Avenue to assist with safety concerns and traffic backups occurring when people try to turn onto Warren Avenue.

“One window shut on the bike lanes but it actually opened up an opportunity for DOT to advance the improvements at Pawtucket and Waterman Avenue, which we’ve been pushing for that for the last eight years,” said Mayor Bob DaSilva. “Since I’ve been in office, we’ve been trying to get DOT to get that project done. And you’re going to see it done.”

St. Martin added that one of the bike-oriented components included within the project’s original scope — scenic overlook bump outs on the southern portion of the Henderson Bridge that accommodates bike traffic — remains a part of the current plan.

DaSilva asked for patience among commuters, recognizing the high volume of construction projects that have been going on in recent months, but pointing out that the improvements are coming at no local tax expense and will benefit the community at large.

“It’s going to be a transformative project,” he said. “I hope the community understands that the funding is there now. I understand there’s a lot of construction going on, but they’re going to try and be as least disruptive as possible with this project.”