Rhode Island’s top lawmakers Thursday said the state is in fiscal limbo over the failure of the westbound half of the Washington Bridge, with no idea how much repairs will cost or when the bill will come due.
Addressing the state’s business elite at an annual Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce lunch, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi acknowledged the potential cost of the deteriorating bridge “does keep me up at night” with fears of the potential impact on the state budget.
“We don’t know. And the experts, [the Department of Transportation] and their engineers, both internal and external, don’t know,” Shekarchi told the crowd. “We don’t know if it’s going to be a repair or replacement. We don’t know how much, and we don’t know where the money’s coming from.”
Washington Bridge’s salvation hardly a typical highway project
The cost of interstate highway projects is typically shared, with the federal government covering 80% and state 20%.
But the peculiar circumstances around the westbound span of the Washington Bridge, which had been under sporadic rehabilitation for several years when it was abruptly closed Dec. 11 to protect human life, make it far from a typical highway project.