Improving Roads and Bridges

• Selected Walsh Construction Company—one of the nation’s top bridge builders—to construct a new, state-of-the-art Washington Bridge that will enhance safety, ease congestion, and support long-term economic growth along the I-195 corridor.
  • Secured more than enough funding, including $220.9 million in federal grants, to fully cover the Washington Bridge rebuild ensuring it will be completed without any additional ask of taxpayers.
  • Completed the demolition of the closed span of the bridge on time and on budget in December 2025.
• Established the State’s first-ever program dedicated to directly investing in the construction and repair of municipal roads, bridges, and sidewalks across all 39 cities and towns. RhodeRestore, formerly known as the Municipal Road Grant Program, has approved over 1,000 projects, encompassing 815 lane miles of roadwork and nearly 25 miles of sidewalk improvements.
  • Created a reliable revenue stream to make RhodeRestore a permanent program, while introducing new options for municipalities to access local matching funds, ensuring sustained improvements to local infrastructure.
• Continued work on the largest bridge project in Rhode Island history this year: the I-95 15 Bridge Project. Through replacement, repair, and removal, this initiative will remove 15 bridges from the state’s backlog of poor and deteriorating bridges along the critical corridor between Providence and Warwick. The project improves safety and traffic flow for nearly 200,000 vehicles and $9.7 billion in freight transported daily, supported by a $251 million federal Bridge Investment Program (BIP) grant secured by RIDOT this year.  

• Invested the resources needed to continue to fund the 10-year State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) to bring Rhode Island’s roads and bridges to a state of good repair. To date, the RI Department of Transportation (RIDOT) has completed 231 projects, including the repair and replacement of 276 bridges, totaling $2.7 billion of total construction. The total value of all projects under RhodeWorks is $4.2 billion.
• Paved more than 93 miles of state-maintained roads valued at $478 million. In addition to paving projects, Rhode Island has accelerated about 100 projects with federal funding. These projects include bridge rehabilitation, resurfacing, traffic safety projects, stormwater, and bike/pedestrian improvements.
• Improved Rhode Island’s Bridge Sufficiency Rating from 77 percent in 2016 to 90 percent as of December 2025 through the implementation of RhodeWorks.