Providence River Bridge

The Providence River Bridge is the only open steel through arch bridge in Rhode Island. It was built in 2006 as part of the I-195 Relocation Project (also called the Iway Project). This 80' high, 400' long, steel bridge was preassembled and floated 12 miles into place on August 27, 2006.

The Iway project was composed of 16 individual projects to relocate a 45-year-old, 1.6-mile stretch of I-195 and an adjacent 0.8-mile portion of I-95 through Providence. These projects included 14 new bridges, 25 lane-miles of new interstate, a new interchange with I-95, five miles of new city streets, and 4,100 feet of new pedestrian river walks. All of the projects were completed and were in use by the end of 2010. The previous infrastructure was demolished and made ready for redevelopment by April 2013.

The Providence River Bridge is a network arch bridge. A network arch bridge is a tied arch bridge with inclined hangers that cross each other at least twice. This bridge is the widest and first three-arch network arch bridge in the U.S., and it is the first network arch bridge with a skew angle in the world! The bridge was constructed by laying the arches flat and assembling them. They were then raised, and the interconnecting cross-members were added. The bridge was then put onto barges and the floated up the coast from North Kingston to Providence.