Federal highway official, RI Gov. Dan McKee examine situation at Washington Bridge

In the event that he has to sign off on a replacement of the westbound Washington Bridge, the head of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) walked the ailing span on Monday with Rhode Island officials to see the situation for himself.

"It's a very complicated structure," Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt said while standing halfway up the closed Gano Street exit ramp off Interstate 195.

State officials Monday declined to provide any estimate as to how long the westbound bridge would be out of service if the span has to be replaced. On Monday, Bhatt said it could be a "year or two," but that it would depend on the construction plan.

"We've been tracking this pretty closely as it has evolved from a rehab and repair to a potential replacement," he said as he was flanked by Gov. Dan McKee and Rhode Island's congressional delegation. "I wanted to come up here and get eyes on the bridge today."

Repair or replace?

The team of engineers studying what to do with the closed span have yet to officially decide whether a repair or full replacement is needed to get the bridge in a safe state so that it can be permanently reopened.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation estimated in December that it would take only three weeks to repair the bridge, but with each subsequent briefing and update, the timeline has stretched and the possibility of a major replacement project has become more likely.

No firm answers on how long Washington Bridge will be out of commission, but timeline is expanding

RIDOT is expecting to deliver its plan for how to fix the bridge at the end of this month or early March.

Peter Alviti Jr., the director of the state transportation department, has had the leading role in most Washington Bridge news briefings to this point, but was in the background during Monday's news conference. "The data will tell us," is all Alviti would say — while being whisked away — in response to questions about whether the current span will have to come down.

McKee's deputy chief of staff, Joseph Almond, whom the governor assigned to coordinate the state's bridge response, walked by Alviti's side on the bridge.

No cost estimates have been released for potential bridge repairs but Bhatt said the federal highway agency will bring in financial experts to determine the best way to pay for the repairs, however expensive they turn out to be.

"If it is going to be a replacement ... what can we do as quickly as possible to bring federal funds to bear so that we can get the bridge replaced as quickly as possible if that is the course that they end up taking," Bhatt said.

Federal government increasingly involved in the Washington Bridge

The federal government has keen interest in the condition of the bridge, as it probably will fund the vast majority of whatever work is done on it.

The Justice Department and Department of Transportation's inspector general last month launched an investigation into whether the tens of millions already spent on an assortment of construction projects at the bridge since 2015 violated the False Claims Act.

With those other federal agencies on the case, Bhatt said his department will not be investigating how the bridge's condition deteriorated rapidly from the point when it passed an inspection in July to being at risk of catastrophic failure four months later.

RIDOT's contractors are doing their own "forensic analysis" of the bridge with oversight from another consultant hired by the state Department of Administration.

In the next several days, Bhatt also said that his agency would bring in operational specialists to analyze how traffic is flowing through the area and to determine what may need to change to make that flow more efficient.

Who is Shailen Bhatt and the connection to the Washington Bridge?

Bhatt was appointed Federal Highway administrator at the start of last year and came to President Joe Biden's administration from the infrastructure consulting firm AECOM, for which he was a senior vice president. AECOM has worked as a consultant on numerous Rhode Island projects over the years, including the Washington Bridge.

AECOM performed the July 2023 inspection of the Washington Bridge westbound span that determined that the structure, while in poor condition, was safe. In December, engineers working on the bridge discovered damage and deterioration that suggested it was at risk of failing, prompting state officials to close it.

On Monday, Bhatt said he never worked on anything related to Rhode Island while he was at AECOM.

Before joining AECOM, Bhatt was executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation. When Bhatt left that position, he was succeeded by Michael Lewis, the former director of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. (It so happened that Lewis was replaced at the Colorado DOT by Soshana Lew, who worked under Alviti at RIDOT.)

Mayor Smiley tells tractor-trailers to stay out of Providence neighborhoods

The emergency shutdown of I-195 West at the Washington Bridge, which in normal times carried more than 90,000 vehicles per day across the Seekonk River, caused severe traffic congestion and gridlock on local streets in Providence and East Providence.

Since then, RIDOT has diverted westbound traffic onto half of the eastbound span, easing the worst congestion and equalizing traffic between the two directions.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and East Providence Mayor Bob DaSilva were both at Monday's news conference.

In response to large trucks driving through East Side neighborhoods to avoid I-195 traffic, Smiley closed Gano Street over the weekend for emergency repairs and is asking the state to ban tractor-trailers from the street. If there is no way to legally prohibit trucks from driving through the neighborhood, Smiley appealed to truckers to "please" not get off the highway and detour onto neighborhood roads.

On the other side of the river, RIDOT last Friday moved the bridge-required narrowing of I-195 West to two lanes further east toward Massachusetts to help alleviate gridlock on the local East Providence streets that feed onto highway entry ramps.

More: Timeline of the Washington Bridge closure: Here's how it all happened.

On Monday, McKee said the state is still analyzing the traffic impact of the change before deciding whether it should be reversed or made permanent.

Bhatt praised RIDOT for closing the bridge in December after officials had found the structural problems, including multiple broken anchor rods. He described the Washington Bridge as complicated and essentially three bridges that function as one.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Federal highway administrator examines situation at Washington Bridge