The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has a full slate of projects planned that will impact Warwick roads, bridges, the airport and even the station in the year ahead and beyond.

According to RIDOT Chief Public Affairs Officer Charles St. Martin, the department has ambitious plans for Warwick this year, with completion of  some major repaving, reconstruction and beautification projects planned..

Here’s a look at what RIDOT has in store for 2024:

Finishing up old projects

RIDOT’s Airport Connector Beautification Project is nearly done, though behind schedule. According to St. Martin, the holdup there is due to a slower-than-expected delivery time for materials for the airport signage.

The repaving of Post Road from Elmwood Avenue to Coronado Road is considered part of the project as well, according to St. Martin, and will hold up the project’s official completion to the summer. Overall costs for it come to $12.9 million.

“We’ll be working on sidewalks, wheelchair ramps, making [the area] ADA-accessible, and then paving,” St. Martin said.

Referencing other pavement work to be done along Post Road this year, as well as repaving completed in 2023, St. Martin said that there will be new pavement “from Apponaug to Warwick Ave.”

Meanwhile, the DOT’s study on whether to expand the T.F. Green Airport train station to accommodate an Amtrak platform has been completed, according to St. Martin. It isn’t publicly available, he said, because it needs to be reviewed by a couple of  agencies.

“That is done and is currently being reviewed by Amtrak for their approval,” St. Martin said. “The next step after that is that it will be reviewed by the Federal Railroad Administration. They may make some changes.”

Amtrak public relations specialist Jen Flanagan confirmed that Amtrak currently has the preliminary design and environmental study from RIDOT, and is reviewing it.

“Amtrak continues to support ongoing rail investment throughout the country, including modernizing critical infrastructure and expanding service for future ridership growth,” Flanagan said in the statement. “We look forward to supporting RIDOT with their leadership of this project and other initiatives.”

Ongoing Route 37 work

One of the busiest highways in the state, Route 37 has seen a good degree of work done on it over the past few years, and it isn’t letting up in 2024.

According to St. Martin, the DOT’s work on Route 37 will continue with paving and bridge rehabilitation work throughout the year. The first stage of the project- focusing on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of six bridges between Post Road and Pontiac Avenue- is expected to be finished by this summer. Work on the second phase of the project- focusing on the western part of Route 37, as well as adding a third lane to Route 295 northbound up to the Route 6 exit in Johnston- has already begun, and is expected to be finished by 2026.

The Route 37 project is expected to be fully completed in three phases, with a third phase expected to right-size the highway and end it with an at-grade intersection with Post Road. That phase has yet to begin, though St. Martin said that RIDOT is looking to award a contract to a design-build contractor this summer.

“Once the contract is awarded, they’ll begin working [on the third phase],” St. Martin said.

The projected cost of Route 37 work is $256.9 million. According to the DOT’s website, more than half of the bridges along the route were considered in poor condition prior to the start of construction.

RIDOT will also be repaving the Washington Secondary Trail. The trail functions as a bike path from Cranston to Coventry, with a roughly two-thirds of its nineteen miles located in Cranston and Warwick.

Major arteries to be repaved

Additionally, currently scheduled for repaving in 2024 are a good amount of Warwick’s most traveled roads, as well as the repaving of two bridges on East Avenue.

This year’s paving projects consist of Post Road from Main Ave. to Coronado Road, Bald Hill Road from East Ave. to Route 295, the entire length of Main Ave. and East Ave. to Bald Hill Road and West Shore Road from Long Street to Oakland Beach Ave, according to the DOT’s website. St. Martin said that the DOT will also be paving a small chunk of West Shore Road from Hoxsie Four Corners to Delwood Road and Centerville Road from the I-95 South onramp to Quaker Lane on the Warwick/West Warwick line.

The repaving projects in Warwick, according to the DOT’s website, will cost $102 million, and are built to last at least 30 years.

St. Martin believes that the DOT’s first focus this year in regards to these projects will be repaving Route 117. While parts of the area between Long Street and Oakland Beach Ave. have already been paved due to Rhode Island Energy work in the area, St. Martin said that their paving work did not cover the entirety of the area, and the DOT will get the areas that they missed.

“Between their work and our work, that will fill in any gaps between Long Street and Oakland Beach Avenue,” St. Martin said.

Other traffic changes in the city will be a second left turn lane on East Ave. heading into CCRI’s entrance and the replacement of a traffic light at the intersection of Bald Hill Road and East Ave.

In Cranston, Chief of Staff Tony Moretti said that the city’s Department of Public Works will likely be paving parts of Park Ave. in the summer, though he said that would have to wait for Rhode Island Energy to finish work that they have planned there in the spring.

“They’ve been accelerating their work, so we don’t pave the road and then they dig it up again,” Moretti said. “So they’re completing their work in early spring of this year, and then there’s a waiting period of two or three months for that ground they dug up to settle, and then we’ll be paving.”

In addition, Moretti said that the Knightsville Phase Two Streetscape Project, which is aimed at landscaping, rebuilding sidewalks and beautification in the village, is planned to be completed this year.

Moretti noted that the city will likely have more projects planned by April, when Mayor Kenneth Hopkins submits the city’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget.