More than one year after the westbound Washington Bridge was abruptly shut down, critical questions remain unanswered.
“Folks really want to know why did this happen?” said state Rep. June Speakman (D- District 68). She represents constituents in Bristol and Warren, on the east side of the bridge.
The westbound Washington Bridge carried traffic on Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River from East Providence to Providence since 1968. But in December of 2023, it was abruptly shut down after the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) said a young engineer who was working on a pre-existing project to rehabilitate the bridge noticed broken anchor rods that put the westbound bridge at risk of collapse.
Speakman said, “We’re grateful that the bridge did not fail and that it was caught on time, but still it was very close to failing and we still don’t know why it was almost failing and why a young engineer discovered it instead of the regular inspection processes of the Department of Transportation.”
In February, members of the state’s Senate and House Oversight Committees questioned RIDOT Director Peter Alviti. It was the first oversight hearing since it was decided the bridge needed to be demolished, but many questions about the bridge were off-limits.
At the start of the hearing, state Sen. Mark McKenney (D- District 30) said, “As much as we all might like to discuss some of the issues pertaining to causation and that accountability aspect, the lawsuit essentially precludes us from doing that.”
McKenney was referring to the state’s lawsuit against 13 companies that provided design, construction and inspection services related to the Washington Bridge.
“People are genuinely nervous about driving over bridges in this state,” said state Sen. Jessica de la Cruz (R- District 23).
De la Cruz is the minority leader of the Rhode Island Senate. She described the more than two-and-a-half-hour hearing as ineffective.
When asked if there has been accountability for the handling of the bridge closure, de la Cruz said, “No. And the reason for that is because we don’t have parity between Democrats and Republicans.”
In Rhode Island, Democrats have the majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, and then there’s Democratic Governor Dan McKee.
John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said one-party government can lead to lapses in providing checks and balances.
“I think there has been a desire on the part of the legislature maybe not to embarrass the McKee administration as much as it could if they were of different parties,” Marion said.
Marion said oversight hearings were more aggressive while Donald Carcieri, a Republican, was governor.
“Politicians are always looking to the next election, and they don’t necessarily want to give the Republicans an issue that they could use to try to claim the executive branch,” Marion said. “And so they might not be as aggressive in the questioning. They might not call for Alviti’s resignation.”
The newer eastbound bridge, which opened in 2008, was reconfigured to get traffic moving in both directions. But the congestion has caused people to change when they work and, in some cases, where they’re looking for work.
“My plan is to search for jobs on the other side of the bridge, on the side of the bridge that I’m at. So I’m looking … into southeastern Massachusetts for work as opposed to (looking) for work in Rhode Island,” said Kerry Staniunas, who lives in East Providence.
Fifteen months after the bridge was shut down, many questions remain unanswered, including: how did a bridge that was inspected in July of 2023 deteriorate to the point of being unsalvageable later that year?
“What role did the Rhode Island DOT play in this disaster?” said Ken Block. He’s a former two-time candidate for governor. He’s also the chairman of Watchdog RI, a nonprofit that uses data analytics to inform public policy.
“Was the lack of routine maintenance a cause of this bridge failure? How come you didn’t detect that this bridge was failing until it was basically ready to fall into the river?” Block said.
At a news conference on March 14 of last year, the same day McKee announced the bridge would need to be replaced, he promised there would be accountability.
“The day of reckoning for those who are responsible for the position that we’re in and the position that the people of the state of Rhode Island are in – that day is coming and it’s coming very soon,” McKee said last year.
That was more than a year ago. So far, no one has been held accountable for the bridge failure. We reached out to McKee multiple times for an interview. He declined to talk with us. In a statement, he said in part, the state “… initiated a lawsuit to hold responsible parties accountable. Rhode Island is making great progress toward (a) modern, soundly constructed bridge that will outlast our lifetimes.”
When we followed up and asked the governor’s communications team if anyone in state government bears responsibility for the bridge failure, spokeswoman Olivia DaRocha said, “The State is pursuing legal action against parties whom we believe bear significant responsibility for the bridge failure.”
When asked what responsibility RIDOT bears, Speakman said, “RIDOT bears the ultimate responsibility for making sure that whatever system they have put in place for inspecting the bridges works. So if there were multiple failures in that system, the responsibility rests with the agency.”
Senator de la Cruz agrees.
“They are the watchdog. They are supposed to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars,” de la Cruz said. “And if the work wasn’t done properly, then (RIDOT) could have gone back to the contractor and said, ‘Nope, this wasn’t done correctly. You need to go back and fix it.’”
The demolition process has also been called into question. Block said he doesn’t understand why the state would award Aetna Bridge Company the contract to demolish the bridge when it’s one of the contractors being sued by the state.
“It’s one of the reasons it’s hard to take this lawsuit seriously,” Block said. “It’s either they’re a trusted contractor or they’re not, but you can’t treat them as both.”
While Speakman wants to get to the bottom of how the bridge reached this breaking point, she said RIDOT has been forthcoming with the public. On its website, for instance, people can find inspection reports for the westbound bridge dating back to 2015.
Speakman said, “To DOT’s credit, they do have a lot of information available on their website about the status of the bridge project, about traffic patterns. They are very good at letting us know if there are going to be changes in traffic patterns at night, for example.”
Alviti said the state will know who’s going to build the new bridge on June 6. He also expects that on that day the public will know how much it’s going to cost to build it and how long the construction will take.
Marion said there’s an urgency to get answers about what went wrong with the old bridge before building a new one.
“We’re about to engage and spend half a billion dollars or so in building a new bridge. And we are trusting the same people who did oversight over the failed reconstruction of the old bridge to do that. And until we know the full extent of how they succeeded or failed in that oversight, I don’t think you can really have confidence they’re going to do a good job of overseeing spending another half billion dollars,” Marion said.
Drivers also want to know that the mistakes made with the westbound bridge don’t repeat themselves.
“It does worry me that the other bridges in the state may not have had the level of inspection that we might’ve expected them to,” said Kyle Towne, who lives in Providence.
DaRocha said the state has added additional bridge engineering staff to its bridge inspection program. As far as not repeating the mistakes made with the westbound bridge elsewhere in the state, DaRocha said the design of the old bridge was unique- no other bridge in the state was designed that way. She went on to say the state has asked the two companies competing to build the new bridge “to not include any post-tensioning components or other difficult to inspect or maintain elements, such as those used on the old bridge.”
Senator de la Cruz said finding out what led up to the bridge failure is less about pointing fingers and more about ensuring a similar situation doesn’t happen again.
“Obviously there’s fault here as well with the McKee administration, but I think that everyone assumes that it started before his tenure, even with Raimondo, maybe possibly even before that,” de la Cruz said. “So timeline would be I think the first thing that I would ask for. When did we know that there was a problem?”
When asked why the day of reckoning is important, Speakman said, “The day of reckoning is the day that we will find out who is ultimately responsible for the failure of the Washington Bridge and for making sure that all of our other bridges are safe.”
Block said he believes people’s lives were at risk before the bridge was closed, and he wants the state to be transparent.
“What happened here was absolutely a failure of government to do its job and they must be held accountable for the failure to keep us safe and to keep this bridge, a very expensive piece of infrastructure, in working condition,” Block said.
