Highway Teardown Tour | 10. Providence, RI

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Dig – Highway Teardown Tour | Episode 10: Providence, RI

Podcast: The Big Dig
Host: Ian Koss (GBH News)
Episode: Highway Teardown Tour | 10. Providence, RI
Date: July 22, 2026
Guest Panel: Ed Fitzpatrick (The Boston Globe Rhode Island), Mike Lewis (former Big Dig director), Zach Cunha (former U.S. Attorney, Nixon Peabody)
Location: Boston Globe Rhode Island downtown newsroom (former path of I-195)

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Overview:

This episode of The Big Dig’s “Highway Teardown Tour” visits Providence, Rhode Island, to examine a smaller but transformative urban infrastructure project—the relocation of Interstate 195, known as the “Iway” or “The Little Dig.” Host Ian Koss, joined by Ed Fitzpatrick, leads a revealing conversation about the legacy of the Iway, comparing it to Boston’s larger Big Dig, and explores the ongoing saga of Providence’s troubled Washington Bridge. The discussion unpacks the political, economic, and civic impacts of these projects and probes the challenges of public trust, accountability, and the potential for more affordable, community-oriented infrastructure reforms.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Setting the Stage: What Makes the Big Dig Unrepeatable?

• Comparing Big Dig’s Scale and Politics (00:55)
  • Unique convergence of powerful political actors and unprecedented funding:

    “A three-term governor… a local Congressman who also happened to be the speaker of the House, a local Senator who happened to be Ted Kennedy.” (Ian Koss, 00:56)

  • “It was a fluke, a unicorn, something we may never see again.” (Ian Koss, 01:28)
• The search for realistic, smaller-scale solutions led to Providence’s “Little Dig.”

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2. The Iway: Providence’s “Little Dig”

• Project Description and Rationale (02:13–07:56)
  • Mike Lewis explains that the Iway simply shifted one stretch of I-195 a half mile south—no tunnels, no extreme engineering.
  • Key goal: Reconnect and revitalize the Jewelry District/Fox Point neighborhoods, reversing decades of divisive infrastructure.
  • “That half-mile nudge has meant a lot.” (Ian Koss, 02:13)
• Why the Old Route? (09:38)
  • Old I-195 path influenced by midcentury industrial needs and political pressures.
  • Ed Fitzpatrick recounts “the Pawtucket curves”—highway bent to avoid land owned by politically connected clubs.
  • “Should I-95 have that S curve? … There was a club … they wouldn’t give up their land. … That produced the S curve.” (Mike Lewis, 11:30)

Successes and Trade-offs:

• New Opportunities Created
  • “It’s something like 4,000ft of new Riverwalk space, 20 acres of developable land.” (Ed Fitzpatrick, 13:16)
  • Total project cost: $610 million—a fraction of Boston’s project but with visible urban revitalization.
  • “I remember it being referred to as The Little Dig.” (Mike Lewis, 14:14)
• Community Engagement and Pedestrian Bridge (15:39)
  • Pedestrian bridge built atop repurposed highway piers—a deliberate reminder of the past.
    • “It was absolutely part of the thinking to remind people.” (Mike Lewis, 17:45)
  • “You can tell your kids and your grandkids that there is a bridge where the bridge was.” (Mike Lewis, 17:58)
  • The approach of moving slowly allowed for thoughtful, iterative redevelopment.

    “You don’t want it to be done too quickly because you’re bound to make mistakes until you sort of get a feel for the area and what you know, and let other voices come to bear.” (Mike Lewis, 15:07)

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3. The Ongoing Crisis: Washington Bridge Failure

• Introduction to the Issue (23:49)
  • “We’re going to pivot now to a very different bridge project, one that I don’t think has left the public more faithful and optimistic.” (Ed Fitzpatrick, 24:05)
• Sudden Closure and Impact (24:33–25:55)
  • In December 2023, westbound Washington Bridge (I-195 over the Seekonk River) abruptly closed with zero warning due to structural failures.
  • Traffic funneled onto remaining span, causing massive congestion and economic harm.
  • “78,211 vehicles per day down to zero.” (Ed Fitzpatrick, 25:25)
  • Business closures and public frustration followed.

Oversight Failings and Public Accountability:

• Zach Cunha’s Hearing Insights (26:57–32:02)
  • DOT director couldn’t name chief bridge engineer; oversight overly reliant on contractors.
  • “If the only purpose of an entity is to let contracts and pay out money, then why do you need engineers?” (Zach Cunha, 28:15)
  • Shift away from internal engineering oversight—a recipe for missed red flags.
• Neglected Warning Signs
  • 10–11 inspections happened, but missed key dangers:

    “Lots of pictures of some of the these critical components rusting away, but they were all sort of incidental.” (Zach Cunha, 30:55)

  • Metallurgical reports suggest six months or more of severe structural risk before closure.

    “Those didn’t break that afternoon. … It was probably at least six months earlier.” (Zach Cunha, 32:28)

Public Sentiment & Trust:

• Community Frustration (32:51–33:24)
  • Ed Fitzpatrick: “People are still complaining about it bitterly.”
  • “Thank you for your patience while we keep you safe. What do you think of that?”
    — “I don’t believe I’m allowed to voice those terms on a family radio.” (Zach Cunha, 33:20)
• Signage declaring “on budget and on time” sparks cynicism amid endless delays (871 days and counting).

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4. Systemic Reflections: Oversight, Skepticism, and Moving Forward

• Balance Between Oversight and Politics
  • Host raises dilemma: Too much oversight can fuel cynicism; too little risks disaster.
  • “There was productive oversight, but there was also people out to score cheap political points… those things can get mixed up.” (Ian Koss, 34:16)
• Restoring Competence and Trust (35:08)
  • Emphasis on rebuilding internal capacity for technical oversight—staff engineers acting as partners, not adversaries.
  • “Let’s see when that new bridge arrives and how well it’s maintained.” (Zach Cunha, 35:43)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the uniqueness of the Big Dig:

  “It was a fluke, a unicorn, something we may never see again.”
  (Ian Koss, 01:28)

• Comparing scale:

  “Boston was an order of magnitude larger and more complicated… This had its challenges… but I think, by and large, the construction went smoothly.”
  (Mike Lewis, 14:17)

• Floating the Iway bridge into place:

  “They floated it up and everybody had a chance to go out and walk on it one day. … waited for the tide to go down, and that was what settled it down onto the piers. That’s pretty elegant.”
  (Ed Fitzpatrick, 12:08–12:17)

• Choice about waterfront vs. community development:

  “There’s very unlikely ever going to be a perfect solution… It’s a balancing act.”
  (Mike Lewis, 12:43)

• Washington Bridge debacle:

  “The director of the Department of Transportation couldn’t identify the state’s chief bridge engineer.”
  (Zach Cunha, 27:09)

• On public frustration:

  “People are still complaining about it bitterly. … I don’t believe I’m allowed to voice those terms on a family radio.”
  (Zach Cunha & Ed Fitzpatrick, 32:55–33:20)

• Rebuilding trust:

  “My background is I’m a big trust but verify guy.”
  (Zach Cunha, 35:18)

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Memorable Moments:

• Iway’s Pedestrian Bridge as Living Memory:
  The decision to retain and repurpose structural piers as a way to “tell the story” of the old highway.
• Playlist for Bridge Suffering:
  Fitzpatrick proposes a “Washington Bridge blues playlist” for frustrated commuters, including “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Highway to Hell,” and “Can We Fix It? Yes We Can.”
  (36:06–36:48)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:55–02:13: Why Big Dig can’t be replicated; introduction to Iway
• 03:30–07:56: Mike Lewis recounts taking over Rhode Island DOT and the origins of Iway
• 09:38–13:45: Why the old I-195 route existed; quirky political and industrial influences
• 13:40–15:39: Iway’s impacts (Riverwalk, developable land, cost comparison)
• 16:57–18:35: Memorializing infrastructure: pedestrian bridge as living memory
• 23:49–25:55: Sudden closure of Washington Bridge, economic impact
• 26:57–28:44: Oversight failures exposed in legislative hearings
• 32:51–33:24: Public anger and the limits of official messaging
• 34:39–35:18: Balancing oversight and rebuilding trust
• 36:06–36:48: The Washington Bridge blues playlist

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Conclusion

The episode demonstrates how, though not as grand as Boston’s Big Dig, Providence’s Iway achieved transformative change by undoing highway-era mistakes with a focused, cost-effective approach. Yet, the ongoing Washington Bridge saga is a sobering counterpoint, exposing the perils of neglecting internal oversight and eroding public trust. The candid, sometimes humorous tone of the hosts and guests—along with their direct answers and war stories—makes for an engaging, multifaceted lesson in American infrastructure and local politics.

(Playlist link referenced in show notes. For deeper coverage, check out the longer cut on the Rhode Island Report podcast.)

Transcript

[Ian Koss]

Support for the Big Dig comes from Boston Ski and Tennis, helping you and your family get outside and enjoy tennis, the world's healthiest sport. Boost your fitness, mood and community connections. Shop locally in Newton and Westboro or online at bostonski and tennis.com and also from Revision Energy, an employee owned renewable energy company with over 20 years experience building and servicing solar systems for local homes and businesses. Learn how to revision your [e-mail]. The Big Dig in Boston, the namesake of our show, was and is an inspiration. It's a model for what's possible when a city dares to rethink its downtown highways. The problem is that as a model, it is impossible to replicate.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

I mean, just think.

[Ian Koss]

Think about what it took a three term governor who was willing to make the project a defining cause. A local Congressman who also happened to be the speaker of the House, a local Senator who happened to be Ted Kennedy, a Secretary of Transportation whose own grandmother had literally been displaced by a highway. Together they secured billions and billions of dollars in federal and state money to make this project happen. It was a fluke, a unicorn, something we may never see again. And so part of what I've been searching for on this tour are other options, other ways, and yes, cheaper ways to rethink our urban highways. That search led me to Providence, Rhode island where I reunited with someone you may remember from season one to talk about the project known as Iway, or affectionately as Providence's Little Dig A Way did not involve any tunnels or caps, no slurry walls, no ground freezing. It simply involved moving a single bridge on a Single Highway, Interstate 195, about a half mile to the south.

[Zach Cunha]

That's it.

[Ian Koss]

A nudge really to the interstate map. 195 used to have a weird bulge up into downtown providence thanks to iWay. And that bulge is now gone. And there is a new bridge down closer to the water. But as you'll hear in Providence, that half mile nudge has meant a lot. From GBH News, this is the Big Dig Highway Teardown Tour. I'm Ian Koss and just so you know what's coming, this conversation about I weigh will actually turn into a tale of two bridges. Two bridges on the same highway in the same city, but with very different stories. One I think we can now call a success story, the other we definitely cannot. We taped this conversation in partnership with the Boston Globe Rhode island in in their downtown newsroom. That is exactly where the old Interstate 195 used to run. Joining me as co host for the Night was their longtime local reporter, Ed Fitzpatrick.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So, Ed, I have a question for you. I was told that you are known as the Voice of Rhode Island. And so I think, just to get the obvious out of the way, I think for many of our listeners, the thing they're gonna be wondering is what. What is the difference between a Rhode island accent and a Boston accent?

Asking all the right questions. Okay. Yeah, there is a big difference. Emily Sweeney, a Boston Globe reporter, has a great Boston accent, Charleston accent, and we contrasted last time she was down here for a podcast. It's not a Boston accent. It is different. And you can hear it in words like, I say soccer in hockey, and she would say soccer in hockey, and it's a little different. So I asked a dialect coach, why do I talk like this? And explain the influences from Ireland and England and Italy, and it's kind of somewhere in between Brooklyn and Boston.

So you are truly just the halfway point between a Brooklyn accent and a Boston accent.

Yeah, but we're pretty unique.

But pretty unique.

Pretty unique.

Speaking of unique, there are some really interesting highway and bridge stories here that we're going to talk about. And to get us started tonight, we're going to bring up Mike Lewis.

Great to be back. Thank you.

So, Mike, listeners of the Big Dig podcast will remember you as the final project director of the Big Dig. You were the guy who stuck around through the 90s, well into the 2000s, through every crisis, through the ups and the downs after your bosses were fired and your boss's bosses were fired, and you were there to actually finish up the project. And then the very next year, you took a job to give yourself a nice breather down as the director of transportation in Rhode Island. What were you thinking?

[Mike Lewis]

Well, obviously, I wasn't thinking clearly. When I finished up the artery with the completion in 07, I was walking on air for a while because it was a slog. I'd been there for 15 years, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And then I got a call from Jerry Williams. Do you remember? Does anybody here remember Jerry Williams? He was the then director of Rideout. And they were looking for. What they said is they were looking for a chief engineer and would I be interested in. And I said, well, you know, I don't know. I'll, you know, come down and talk to you. When I came down, Jerry, you know, I interviewed with him, and it was clear they weren't looking for a chief engineer. He was like, no, we want.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

He's looking for a replacement.

[Mike Lewis]

He's looking for a replacement. And they'd gotten my name through Federal Highway, I think Federal Highway Administration. So I thought, why not?

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Did he give you any kind of warning or prefacing of what it was like?

[Mike Lewis]

Not really enough. Not enough. But the I way was going on. It was a great, a great project that Rhode island and Providence had taken on. And I'd had, as you know, a little bit of experience with that kind of controversy. So I, I, I signed up.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So I want to get into I way this project you mentioned. I got interested in this story because I had this feeling after the Big Dig series came out, which my goal for that was really to to understand what that project was for, why it mattered, why we spent all that money on it. And it was revelatory for me to realize that it wasn't quite the boondoggle that I had thought it was.

[Mike Lewis]

Thank you, Ian.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

You're welcome. One of my fears after putting that series out was that people would take away from it that the big project is always the right project. The big swing is always the right swing. And I'm not sure that's actually the case. I don't know if that's actually the takeaway from the Big Dig. And so what interests me about aiway is that it is a much smaller, more kind of precise or strategic project that is also transformative in its own way. So I was hoping for folks who don't know or maybe don't remember or who are listening later and have no idea what we're talking about. We what is aiway?

[Mike Lewis]

Okay. And there's some folks in the audience here that probably know it's genesis better than I do. But in the 1990s, the condition of the structures was deteriorating, just as the I93 viaduct in Boston was. And something had to be done. So do you either. Do you rebuild what's there, or do you do something else? And they looked at different alignments. They looked at a northern alignment and a southern alignment and a rebuild in place as the alternatives. And ultimately they picked the southern alignment, which is south of the of the hurricane barrier, for the new alignment. And again, I had no role in that whatsoever. I think it was an excellent decision because it did not only did it have an opportunity to replace or improve the transportation deficiencies of the existing highway system, which were sort of an obsolescent design. You may remember the left exit southbound on 95, and there's some crazy close proximity of on and off ramps, very much like the Boston project. And those, those all had an Opportunity to be improved. But the benefit was that that footprint that the highway took up for the last. Would it be now 50 years and destroyed a community, the jewelry district, Fox Point could be rethought. And I think that's the real benefit that came out of the highway was this. We are sitting right now where the eastbound 95 to 195.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Here on the second floor.

[Mike Lewis]

Here on the second floor. We'd be sitting on the highway right now.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

I have a trivia question for both of you. Do either of you know why 195 wasn't built where it is now, why it did this weird loop up through.

[Mike Lewis]

You know, it's interesting. I was thinking about this and not that I thought you'd ask this question, but I asked myself this question because

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

if you looked at on a map,

[Ian Koss]

it did not make sense.

[Mike Lewis]

There was probably industrial activities taking place in the waterfront. It was probably something that economically perhaps made sense. The other thing is the Interstate highway system. The layout of the Interstate Highway System. It predated Eisenhower. This goes back to planning in the 1930s. Ultimately, I think it was in 44. There was a highway, Federal highway act that laid out the Interstate highway system in something called the Yellow Book. And this is the planning book across the country of where this highway system would be built. And in the urban areas. It was quick access to the downtown cores of every city in the country of a 50,000 population or more to this connected highway system. So having the 195 alignment through here and connecting with 95 right downtown meant you had immediate, theoretically immediate on and off access to take the pressure off the local streets. I think history has proven that wasn't so wise.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So I did. In preparation for this, we talked to a longtime planner with the city of Providence named Bob Azar. And his understanding was that there was a talk when 195 was built originally that it should go where it is now. Right. The sort of logical path. But there was some energy infrastructure. There were like coal heaps or something, port stuff that. That they could not move. And so they went up and around it.

[Mike Lewis]

Very likely with strong political ties. I mean, the Pawtucket curves. Right. All of you know, for those of

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

us who don't know.

[Mike Lewis]

Okay, should I 95 have that S curve in.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Oh, I just drove that curve.

[Mike Lewis]

The answer is. The answer is no. But there was a. There was a club.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

A club there.

[Mike Lewis]

Yeah, up on the hill that they wouldn't give up their land and they're politically connected. So they realigned 95 around the property that's on that club and that produced the escrow.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And what was the northern option like? That's where it went.

[Mike Lewis]

I can't even.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

South. I can't.

I can't even picture the northern option.

[Mike Lewis]

I can't picture it either. I don't know.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Were you here when they floated the bridge into play?

Said, yeah, yeah, it was. I remember that bridge coming up and it was a big deal because you.

Because they built it off site.

Yeah, they floated it up and everybody had a chance to go out and walk on it one day. It's kind of like a. A big neighborhood thing.

The thing that caught my interest in just reading about it was that they floated it into place and then they just waited for the tide to go down, and that was what settled it down onto the piers. That's pretty elegant.

Can I ask you like a devil's advocate question, though? Is like putting it there limits access to the water. There's not much waterfront access in the city of Providence, even though we're on the bay.

[Mike Lewis]

And that's that trade off we talk about. You know, there's very unlikely ever going to be a perfect solution or there's not somebody's ox that will be gored. I think it's a balancing act of how do you trade off these various interests. At the time the alignment was picked, the reconnecting of the community in terms of developable space was more important than immediate access to the waterfront in the ocean state, which I. Presumably there's a. A lot of access to the waterfront.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So in the end, it's. The bridge is essentially moved 2,000ft south. It's just a nudge of this highway. But doing that, you can see behind us it's something like 4,000ft of new Riverwalk space, 20 acres of developable land. And the number that really struck me was the cost. Do you remember what the total price tag was?

[Mike Lewis]

I think something in the order of 610. 610 to 680.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

You're right on the money, Mike.

[Mike Lewis]

Always been good with numbers. Yeah.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

$610 million. So you ran the Big Dig, you finished the Big Dig, you finished. I wei. Which city got more bang for their buck, do you think?

[Mike Lewis]

Interesting. I don't think you'd probably be doing both projects a disservice to compare them directly. I mean, the scale of what went on in Boston. No offense to Providence or Rhode Island.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

I've heard people call this Providence's big dig.

[Mike Lewis]

They call. I remember it being referred to as The Little Dig.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

The Little Dig.

[Mike Lewis]

Isn't that right? So I think from a. You know, it's literally, you know, Boston was an order of magnitude larger and more complicated because of the construction. And, you know, what had to go through. This had its challenges. It always has its challenges. But I think, by and large, the construction went smoothly. The way the community came together toward the end to decide how the remainder of the land would be developed, I think is a positive story. I think you had very committed people down here to see a positive outcome, and I think you've got it.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And I was just curious that you mentioned when you came in that you haven't been back here since 2015. So what do you think? This is dramatically different than the last time you walked here?

[Mike Lewis]

Very different. And I'll admit it took me a while to get my bearings, but it came back. I'm really pleased with what has happened and gratified. And it's not that it's done yet. We were talking about this. It's been 10 years. Shouldn't it all have been done already? I would probably argue that you don't want it to be done too quickly because you're bound to make mistakes until you sort of get a feel for the area and what you know, and. And let other voices come to bear. So I think the fact that you've advanced it as far as you have is commendable.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And why do you think it's been successful? I mean, there was a plan for a minor league baseball park right behind us. There was a plan for the tallest building in Rhode island right across the street. Those plans did not take place, thankfully. There is a pedestrian bridge, though.

[Mike Lewis]

Well, I think the. You know, every project like this, there's a catalyst perhaps that sort of makes it come together. And I do. I'm very pleased with how the pedestrian bridge has come out. It was something that we thought of at the time. The original environmental impact statement and the commitment to the Army Corps for the project was originally to take out the piers from the Providence river that held up the old bridge. And at the time, there was a lot of discussion locally about what can we do differently? And we just said, you know, what if we don't take these peers out, we can save some money. If we turn that money into investment into a pedestrian bridge, can't that work? And I think that started this discussion. And I think ultimately, after a lot of much gnashing of teeth, I think the result is out here, and I think it's an anchor to the whole corridor And I think it does bring more activity further down the river and expand the footprint of the city.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

One thing that strikes me here, in telling the story of the Big Dig, I've thought a lot about how we remember and even memorialize projects like that. And the elevated highway in Boston, obviously, was just removed entirely. There are a few tiny remnants of it, but it's kind of erased from.

[Ian Koss]

From memory.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

You chose here to save and actually repurpose the original piers of, you know, the highway bridge and turn it into a footbridge. And it's an interesting effect to walk over that footbridge and see that the pier underneath it is way wider than the bridge itself and kind of be reminded of that original scale of the structure. Was that part of the thinking, or is that a totally pragmatic move?

[Mike Lewis]

No, it was absolutely part of the

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

thinking to remind people.

[Mike Lewis]

Yeah. And I think that it's a much more active reminder than those elements of the elevated artery that are still standing around Faneuil Hall.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

You have to look for those.

[Mike Lewis]

Yeah. You have to run into them in a drunken stupor, I think. But I think this is, you know, this is the story can be told. You can tell your kids and your grandkids that there is a bridge where the bridge was. And if you look back that way, there's the alignment that the highway used to be. And if you look towards Fox Point, you can see those buildings that are. That are decades newer than the ones around it. That's the alignment of the highway. And I think that the footprint, whether it's aerial or even a ground level, you can make that distinction based on the architecture. Where is. You know, these buildings are the footprint of the old highway.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

One of the. One of the themes I'm always interested in in public works is the sort of cynicism that can surround them and feed on these projects.

[Mike Lewis]

There's no cynicism in this.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Not in Rhode island, no. No, no, no.

Maybe in Massachusetts, but not here. Do you feel like in one of the senses I got talking to you about the Big Dig and studying other projects like this is that you're almost always in a virtuous cycle of building trust and building understanding, or in a vicious cycle of building cynicism and building mistrust, do you feel like AI Wei left the city and the state with more faith than when the project began?

[Mike Lewis]

I certainly hope so. I think that there's a lot of. During construction, there's disruption, there are impacts on traffic. I remember one day and you'll remind me of his name. But he was a talk radio named Dan Tucker.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Dan York.

[Mike Lewis]

Dan York. So we were opening up the southbound 95 to eastbound 195 the day it opened. You're transferring the movement that historically for 60 years had been a left exit, and you're moving it to the right.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

This was like the flip the switch. This is the flip the switch moment between the.

[Mike Lewis]

This is like, you know, going from the. The i93 bridge. All of a sudden you're in tunnel.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Right.

[Mike Lewis]

You know, so it's that. That switch. And we had a. There was a woman at. At rideout. Dana. No, if you may remember, Dana. Dana was unbelievable at getting the word out. She had me doing every kind of broadcast there was. I've never heard of social media. I was such a Luddite. She had me doing stuff on, I don't know, whatever. But it was extensive viral message signs on the highway weeks in advance. Be prepared. Exit X is going to move from the left to the right. You couldn't possibly miss it except that nobody pays attention to any of that stuff. So we do the flip. York calls me up. He is absolutely apoplectic. Apoplectic to the point of, like, this is, you know, ridiculous. And I'm trying to like.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Dan.

[Mike Lewis]

I understand your, you know, your. Your concerns. You know, we've had a lot of notice in advance. I will tell you that within the next couple days, people will get used to it. And then you hung up on me. So there was a. You know, that was the kind of reaction you get. And you, you do. I mean, that's just what people do.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So having worked in the pressure cooker of Rhode island politics and the pressure cooker of Massachusetts politics, which is more

[Mike Lewis]

disfunct, don't forget, I just ended up in New York doing the congestion price.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Oh, okay.

So you have the diplomatic option of just saying New York is the worst and pleasing everyone.

[Mike Lewis]

They all have their unique challenges. You all know Rhode island is very parochial, and I'm gonna have to say, tough call. It's a tough call. I'm gonna say on a scale. Again, it could be very pointed down here, but the city of New York has a bigger budget than all but two states. It was just, again, a scale thing, that egos are big.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Mike, thanks so much for coming back and doing this.

Great to be back. Thank you.

[Mike Lewis]

Thank.

[Ian Koss]

You. Well, that was a nice, feel good kind of chat. But in planning this event, there was another bridge that came up, another bridge on this same interstate, in fact, that we could not, not talk about. If you live in Rhode Island. You know exactly what I'm referring to. And you know, it has led to a lot of cynicism. After the break, the ongoing saga of the Washington Bridge. Support for the Big Dig comes from the law firm of Davis Malm. Immigration laws are complex. From multinational businesses to entrepreneurs with families, their attorneys assist in obtaining short and long term immigration benefits. Learn [e-mail] and also from the Maine Maritime Museum. Their new exhibit Resounding highlights the resilience and traditions of Maine's indigenous and black maritime communities, featuring both historic artifacts and contemporary art. Mainmaritime museum.org.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So speaking of, speaking of cynicism, speaking of pressure cookers, we're going to pivot now to a very different bridge project, one that I don't think has left the public more faithful and optimistic than when it started. Is that fair to say, Ed?

Yeah. And my colleagues Steph Machado and Alexa Gagas did a story that has a counter on how many days it's been since the Washington Bridge closed. And at five o', clock, so just minutes ago, 871 days since that, that bridge closed.

[Mike Lewis]

All right.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So Ed, take, take us back to the afternoon of December 11, 2023. What happened?

[Mike Lewis]

Where were you?

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Yeah, I mean, that happened late in the day. And we got notified that there was going to be a press conference. The Department of Transportation director at the time, Peter Elvidi, was going to announce something. They abruptly closed the 195 bridge that carries the Seekonk River.

And there was no warning.

No warning. It wasn't something that had been on the radar, no sign that it was about to close.

So just for geographic context, it's the same exact road we've been talking about. It's 195 right over there. That way.

Yep.

In Providence is sort of a, a city with two rivers. And you know, I wei was crossing one river and Washington Bridge is over the other river.

It's over the Seekonk river between Providence and East Providence.

Why is it so important?

So that's a key link right in here to Interstate 95. You know, one of the the busiest bridges in the and before it closed, 78,211 vehicles per day down to zero

vehicles per day with zero warning down

to zero on the westbound lanes. You know what they did is they closed it down and there's two spans there actually, and they funneled all the traffic going each way onto the other span.

Got it.

And it's had a huge impact. It's all traffic it's cost people businesses, caused businesses to close and led to a lot of pointed questions about why that wasn't discovered earlier.

And we'll let's, let's get into the

pointed questions and we're going to talk. And on that point, Zach Cunha, please come up. For those who don't know him, He's a former U.S. attorney, served between 2021 and 2025 as a federal prosecutor for 20 years. Now a partner in the Nixon Peabody law firm. And Zach and I spent some quality time in November during a five hour oversight hearing before the House and Senate Oversight committees to discuss the Washington Bridge. And you grill the Department of Transportation director at the time, Peter Alvidi. So I am curious to hear what was the most surprising thing you heard that day. It was five hours of testimony. What did you not expect to hear that day?

[Zach Cunha]

I'm not sure that I could pin it down to one thing. I think, you know, there were a number of moments. The fact that the director of the Department of Transportation couldn't identify the state's chief bridge engineer like you asked.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Bernheim.

[Zach Cunha]

Yes.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Yeah. The program director for bridge inspections. He could not.

[Zach Cunha]

The person who, according to this outside study that Rideout itself commissioned was ultimately the person who was responsible for overseeing maintenance of bridges in the state of Rhode Island. The fact that the director couldn't identify who that was, that was, that was one item that was particular.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

What did that tell you?

[Zach Cunha]

Quite a lot. I mean, it's of a piece with the other things that were shocking about that hearing. The fact that ride on at the end of the day it was very clear and I think by the end of the hearing the director was almost proud of this fact, relied almost exclusively on contractors, not just to do the work but, but to do the oversight and to assess the oversight of other contractors. And there was no real backstop within the agency.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So what do you say to that? Because, yeah, that was his main point. He said it's not our job to second guess those contractors. We pay them a lot of money. So what can we do if they don't do their damn job is the way he put it.

[Zach Cunha]

Well, respectfully, why are you there? What is the purpose of a Department of Transportation? If the only purpose of an entity is to let contracts and pay out money, then why do you need engineers? Why do you need all of this staff? Why do you need all of this support? And I think it raises serious and legitimate questions about whether the taxpayer is getting value for money and whether an agency is functioning the way it should.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And at the end of that hearing, I sense that you were trying to tee up a decision for the state legislature or the administration to make a change in that regard. So what do you think it should be done so that this doesn't happen again so we don't miss another Washington Bridge in the years to come?

[Zach Cunha]

So I think the fundamental question is, you know, at the end of that hearing, I think the director sort of posed his position as we had a lot of failing infrastructure in the state of Rhode island for a very long time. Look how successful we've been at replacing infrastructure.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Do you agree with that?

[Zach Cunha]

So the director referred to this as something called the red pencil brigade. Inside Rideau. I picture engineers over drawing tables designing each and every bridge and pedestrian overpass in Rhode Island.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So the red pencil was this idea that everything has to be done in house by hand.

[Zach Cunha]

That's how I took it. And so obviously there's a role for public private partnerships. Obviously, as I mentioned, great strides were made to replace a lot of infrastructure with roadworks. The question is, do you have to do that at the expense of having any ability to oversee and assess what the contractors are doing? And it was very apparent that part of the cost or the methodology of going down that road was to abandon any kind of internal oversight ability, internal engineering reviewability that I, I think I know from prior experience existed within rideout for a long period of time.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

There had been that capacity in the past. Correct?

[Zach Cunha]

Correct.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And. And what happened to it?

[Zach Cunha]

Well, I think it either atrophied or left or was not supported the way that it should have been.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So is there a sense that, like, there were trade offs that they're prepared to make where we want to build a lot of stuff quickly, and we're not actually going to put resources towards inspecting the stuff we already have.

[Zach Cunha]

So, you know, it's interesting that you pinpoint that, because if you look at the Washington bridge, there were 10 or 11 inspections in the decade.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

At least it had been inspected.

[Zach Cunha]

It had been inspected. The question isn't whether you were doing inspections, but what became apparent was, were those inspections looking for the right things? Were they looking in the right places? You know, the report that was done by this engineering firm after the fact pointed out that there were lots of pictures of some of the these critical components rusting away, but they were all sort of incidental. They just happened to be in the edge of the frame. No one was focusing on the fact that if this thing rusts out, the bridge falls down.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

I just have to ask, first of all, how do you feel coming out of a five hour hearing like that?

[Zach Cunha]

So you know what? Cory Booker stood up in the Senate for 24 hours. I got nothing on him. Honestly, it was energizing. I'm a Rhode Islander. My family and I get stuck on that bridge on a routine basis. It was an opportunity to get up there and actually ask some questions about how this happened and why.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

One thing I was curious about from what you learned is you mentioned you go over that bridge. How long were Rhode Islanders driving over that bridge when it was in danger of collapse?

[Zach Cunha]

I think what the report showed, what came out was that those tie down rods, because of the way that they had rusted, because of the extent to which they had narrowed, because of the fact that the surfaces where they were cracked had rusted over. Those didn't break that afternoon. They didn't break in a day. And in fact the report, one of the metallurgical reports that came out of that action review suggests that it was probably at least six months earlier.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Six months?

[Zach Cunha]

Yeah. That those driving fractured. And that obviously raises some significant concerns.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So now it's been two years. How many days are we at?

871 days.

871 minutes ago. What is, and this is, I'm curious to hear from both of you. What is the public sentiment now? How are people feeling about the Washington Bridge?

[Zach Cunha]

Well, I defer to you, my friend,

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Voice of Rhode Island.

I'm in a running club. The Ganser Running club goes over it every Wednesday. So people are still complaining about it bitterly. What did you think of the signs that are been placed along the Washington Bridge that say on budget and on time.

[Zach Cunha]

Actually my personal favorite was please bear with us and be patient while the old bridge is demolished, which I think were up for months after it was long gone.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Yeah. When you go over the bridge. Thank you for your patience while we keep you safe. What do you think of that?

[Zach Cunha]

I don't believe I'm allowed to voice those terms on a family radio.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

It's a family program.

One of the challenging takeaways from the Big Dig for me that it's hard to articulate this, but there's a lot of conversation right now about how much public input is the right amount or too much, how much environmental review is the right amount or too much. One thing I took from studying the Big Dig is that oversight is another one of these things that on its surface sounds like an unalloyed good. More oversight is always better. But it was clear to me in looking at the story of the project, that there was productive oversight, but there was also people out to score cheap political points oversight, and that those things can get mixed up together when these projects become divisive and they become controversial. And suddenly people more to gain from finding the failures and finding the problems than they have to gain from finding the solutions and working towards them. So how do we find that balance of a culture of transparency and understanding, but not everybody feeling like there is somebody looking over their shoulder, looking to get them?

[Zach Cunha]

So with oversight, I think that's absolutely true. That's why in this context, I've talked a lot about internal capacity within the organization as opposed to somebody who is perceived to be staring over your shoulder. I mean, I would hope that the culture at rideout, I know historically at some points has been and certainly should be, that you have members of the engineering staff who are not perceived as alien to the rest of the work of the project, but can actually weigh in and double check your work and double check their work.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

And my last question, just to play off what Ian was talking about with cynicism and skepticism, what can be done to rebuild trust after the Washington Bridge fiasco?

[Zach Cunha]

So I. I take heart in the fact that the legislature and the leadership has taken an interest in this issue. I take heart in the fact that there seem to be steps that are being taken to restore some of that capacity at ride On. Look, my background is I'm a big trust but verify guy. So let's see when that new bridge arrives and how well it's maintained.

[Mike Lewis]

Very good.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

Thank you for being subject to our own intensive hearing here.

[Zach Cunha]

Not five hours, but I appreciate it.

[Mike Lewis]

Thank you.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

So before we let people go tonight, Ed, I understand you solicited songs for a Washington Bridge themed playlist.

Yes.

So what should everyone be listening to on their drive home? Especially if they are, God forbid, driving over the bridge?

Check out the Washington Bridge blues playlist. We've got about 13 songs that we thought might come in handy as you're stuck in traffic on the Washington bridge, including Bridge over troubled Water. Some people thought that should be Troubled Bridge. Trouble Bridge. Troubled Bridge over water.

Oh, okay.

And yeah, Working on the highway. And I can't drive 55, but I.

It was highway to Hell.

Highway to Hell is on there. It wasn't all negative, though. There was Bob the builders. Can we fix it? Yes, we can.

Can we fix it? Yes, we can.

[Mike Lewis]

That's how you should end. Is right there.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

That's it right there. All right. Thanks so much for coming out.

Thank you.

[Ian Koss]

We'll put a link to the Washington Bridge Blues playlist in the show notes. Next up on the Highway Teardown Tour, we wrap it up back home in Boston with the final chapter of the Big Dig story that we never got to tell in Season one. Thanks again to our partners at the Boston Globe, Rhode island to Edit for asking the tough questions, to Megan for getting it recorded, and to Lila for making the whole thing possible.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

If you want to know way more

[Ian Koss]

about the Ocean State and hear a longer cut of this taping, find it on the Rhode Island Report podcast. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, leave us a review wherever you're listening. And while you're at it, maybe leave us a suggestion about what other cities we should cover someday on our Highway Teardown Tour. The Teardown Tour is produced by Fiona Boyd and myself, Ian Coss, with support from Isabel Hibbert. Our editor is Lacey Roberts. The executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. The artwork is by Bill Miller.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

The Big Dig is a production of

[Ian Koss]

GBH News and distributed by prx. I'll see you in Boston,

[Mike Lewis]

Sam.

[Ian Koss]

I really hope you're enjoying the show, and before I let you go, I

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

just want to drop in with that

[Ian Koss]

constant podcaster's reminder to please rate the show. Leave us a review, subscribe, and of course, tell a friend.

[Ed Fitzpatrick]

All that stuff really, really does help

[Ian Koss]

us keep the show going. Thank you so much

[Mike Lewis]

from prx.