During a virtual public hearing on Tuesday evening, mass-dot officials shared new designs and an appropriate timeline for the construction of a new, car-free bridge over the Mystic River from Draw Seven Park in Somerville to the Encore Casino Riverwalk in Everett.
The proposed bridge would essentially extend the northern beach path via the Mystic River in order to connect to the meeting district and the existing Path systems in Somerville and Boston:
The state's Ministry for Nature Conservation and Recreation (DCR) had previously managed the project, but this agency had difficulty bringing it through the planning phases.
Even the information meeting on Tuesday was with several delays: it was originally planned for May and was re -planned as a personal hearing on June 24th at the Somerville High School. Hours before the start of the meeting, Mass announced that the event was practically instead instead so that the participants could end up in today's extreme heat.
New designs have much wider bridge deck
When DCR began designing the project in 2018, the design called for a 12-foot bridge deck to build-wide enough so that two people on the bicycles exist to fear each other to fear that the way for the expected foot and bicycle traffic of the bridge would be too tight.
In the six years since then, a boom in real estate development proposals for the Everett side of the river has significantly increased traffic forecasts for the proposed bridge.
When Mass was taken over by DCR at the beginning of this year, the agency officials promised that they would follow a design with a wider 18-foot deck.
The new design would be wide enough so that three or four people come together comfortably side by side, and more corresponds to the recommendations of Nacto, North America's standard determination for transport technology.
There are also a few more subtle visual differences in the updated design of Massdot. The previous design (see illustration below) would have set the bridge on a series of V-shaped pillars, whereby a central span of cables is hung under a single sheet in the middle of the river (see below).
The new design uses more traditional T-shaped piers that are closer to the river banks, while the central arch and its supportive V-shaped pillars have both doubled, presumably to support the wider deck.
A somewhat tighter timeline
Mass dot plans to use a “design building” process for the project, in which the agency would obtain offers from construction companies that would complete the design with the eye to design the construction costs within the restrictions of the necessary specifications and environmental approval requirements.
The agency hopes to develop a fundamental “25 percent” design for the project this summer and to continue to allow the environment for the new bridge by 2026.
The construction could begin before the end of 2026.
During the Q&A part of the meeting, Senator Sal Didomenico, the Everett, Chelsea, Charlestown and the eastern part of Cambridge, asked to clarify how long the construction could take.
Mass Dot Officals replied that the project would probably take 2.5 to 3 years. If the construction begins in autumn 2026, this would mean that the project would be completed by autumn 2029.
This schedule is more ambitious than what Massdot officers anticipated a few weeks ago. As we reported at the beginning of this month, Massdot's latest 5-year capital plan suggested that the agency expects the financing of the project through the finance year 2030 through the financing of the project, and a measure of spokesman shared street blog mass at the time of time that “the construction should only be completed after 2030”.
At the meeting on Tuesday, another meeting participant asked the project team about these comments, and the officials confirmed that the agency now aimed to complete the project “before 2030”.
Read more reporting about the Mystic River Bridge project here.