Drivers could have access to the rebuilt Sagamore Bridge sooner than they thought.
Although replacing the full bridge is expected to take eight to 10 years, vehicles may be able to use one side of the bridge as early as 2033.
Luisa Paiewonsky, director of megaprojects for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, discussed the replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore bridges at a public forum Monday, hosted by Sen. Dylan Fernandes at the Falmouth Public Library.
She said that years before the new Sagamore Bridge is fully built, traffic will be moved from the old bridge onto the southbound side of the new bridge. Since the bridge will have two separate spans — northbound and southbound — one can be used while the other is still under construction.
“It will be large enough to move all of the traffic on the existing Sagamore Bridge over onto this span,” she said. “It will be a little more tight than when they have two spans, but everybody can fit. We will have four lanes crossing the Cape Cod Canal.”
Fernandes, a Democrat who represents the Upper Cape and part of the South Shore, has hosted a series of meetings for the Department of Transportation to provide in-person updates on the project.
Construction of the $2.1 billion Sagamore Bridge is scheduled to start in less than two years, during the winter of 2027-2028.
Paiewonsky said the department recently issued a request for letters of interest from potential bidders and is already seeing a substantial response from contractors and designers.
“We understand that teams are already forming,” she said. “There's a lot of excitement in the industry to bid for this work. Good sign for us, because when there's lots of competition, that keeps the prices lower.”
Meanwhile, permitting and other planning for both the Sagamore and Bourne bridges is underway. The Bourne Bridge, at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion, is not yet funded.
Area residents who attended the forum on Monday asked questions about whether the Healey administration is considering tolls on the bridges (the governor has said no), the construction of a bike path, and more.
Meredith Golden, of Falmouth, posed a question to state officials about potential health and environmental hazards from the construction, and whether the state plans to use wells to check for water pollution from runoff.
“What type of monitoring will there be for potential hazardous debris and air pollutants?” she asked.
Paiewonsky said she didn’t know if individual wells will be monitored, but the contractor will be required to use runoff-prevention techniques and control dust.
When one member of the audience, Edward “Skip” McCormack of Falmouth, mentioned he had worked on the Big Dig, someone else in the audience reacted with a sound of disgust.
Paiewonsky took the opportunity to address how her department is working to prevent cost overruns and delays reminiscent of what became the nation’s most expensive infrastructure project.
Department of Transportation staff are re-analyzing cost estimates and using a conservative timeline, she said.
“We've done something called independent cost estimates, where we've hired a consultant firm that has no prior history with the project to go through, piece by piece, whether our estimates are still good,” she said.
Later this month, the department will voluntarily repeat a workshop it did a few years ago with the Federal Highway Administration. Together, the agencies will examine factors that could delay the schedule or increase the projected cost of $4.5 billion for the two bridges, to make sure the plan for the bridges is as accurate as possible, she said.
