Waltham Bridge Officially Finished
Nearly seven years after work began, bridge is completed.
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Nearly, seven years after construction began, work on the Winter Street bridge has officially ended.
Traffic has been flowing over the bridge since at least June, but officials marked the occasions on Tuesday, Dec. 27 with a ceremony at the bridge.
The project, which started in 2005, increased the size of the Wyman Street intersection and made navigational changes to the ramps to and from Route 128, according to a Massachusetts Department of Transportation press release. Also, three traffic lanes were added to the existing four.
“I’m happy that the bridge is finished and it looks great. Thank you to all,” Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy said in a statement.
While work was originally intended to finish long before this year, the project ran into trouble when the original contractor, the Roads Corporation, filed for bankruptcy. As a result, the state DOT brought in McCourt Construction to finish the job.
The project cost $23 million.
Neo Kong
11:04 pm on Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Only seven years huh...? Nice job. I would like to tell the City Coucil "Heckuva job".
Also the rotary from Bear hill is done too.
That only took twenty years.
Matt Carter
12:56 am on Thursday, December 29, 2011
The city had nothing to do with it. This project was 100% the State.
Ryan Grannan-Doll
9:24 am on Thursday, December 29, 2011
The project, as Matt said, was started and finished by state officials, and state money. None of the blame lies with city officials.
Neo Kong
12:57 pm on Thursday, December 29, 2011
To blame it on the state is a weak excuse.
We have our own damn state rep. from Waltham. What does he do all day....?
We have a law dept. too.
Were they on vacation for twenty years....?
There is no excuse for letting the state abuse this town like that.
What do we pay our city govt. for....?
Matt Carter
1:42 pm on Thursday, December 29, 2011
You want to blame anyone go blame Roads Corp & Verizon. Roads went bankrupt completely putting the project on hold. Then Veizon took forever to relocate there lines and delayed the project further. People really have not figured it out yet but if we start fining verizon $$$ for delaying projects the work would get done faster.