How a Hyde Park bridge shut down for two years — upending a neighborhood

Hyde Park's River Street Bridge looks ancient. Built in 1883, it has two rusty brown iron trusses, like giant spider legs, that run parallel to the road. Up close, it's obvious they've been painted many, many times over the years.

The 140-year-old structure straddles train tracks that serve Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor and two major MBTA commuter rail lines. It's also a main connection from a residential area to shops and restaurants, as well as to Hyde Park Avenue, a main route through this part of Boston.

So when state inspectors shut down the bridge in May of 2022, the community was shocked. The $12 million project to repair it sprawled into a two-year ordeal, involving multiple arms of government and transit. And while the bridge reopened in late December, the job still isn't done.

State Rep. Rob Consalvo said the closure has been the top issue in his district.

The bridge “literally separates half of Hyde Park from the other half,” he said, and its closure ended easy access to the epicenter of the neighborhood.

"It's where you do your shopping, where you get your pizza, you go to the post office, you go to the cleaners,” he said.

While Massachusetts isn't known for the efficiency of its public projects, the River Street Bridge is an example of how even a small piece of infrastructure can get caught in a bureaucratic mess.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is supposed to inspect the River Street Bridge every year; it's one of the nearly 5,200 bridges across the state the agency oversees. But, because this particular bridge sits over those humming train tracks, inspectors need a permit to check its underside. As it turns out, that led to inspection delays.

Records requested and reviewed by WBUR show that inspectors in 2020 had concerns about the underside of the bridge: It was already showing heavy rust and corrosion, and parts of the bridge that support the road had deteriorated.

It took more than two years to get another permit to check the structure again. In May of 2022, inspectors found portions of the bridge to be unsafe and shut it down. Workers cordoned it off in chain link fencing covered in green tarps and posted giant detour signs. On top of the inconvenience, it was an eyesore.

Sisi Megastore owner Scherley Desulmy stared at that fence for months. Her business is located along the pedestrian way adjacent to the bridge. When she opened her store selling soaps, spices and home goods in April last year, she said the landlord told her the bridge was “going to be open in three months.”

When she spoke to WBUR in November, the bridge was still closed and Desulmy said customers were hard to come by. She said she was sad, "because everything is slow, people don’t come in. It’s like I am losing money.”

Over time, residents like Hyde Park content creator Mike Deez began to ask why this blight in the middle of town wasn't getting resolved.

MassDOT acknowledged the project is complex. The bridge is maintained by the state agency and has gas, electricity and telephone utility lines running through it that serve Boston residents on both sides of the bridge.  Additionally, the state needed to work with the city to identify detour routes and adjust the timing of traffic lights at nearby intersections to ease the crush of traffic. The state also had to coordinate with the MBTA and Amtrak on train schedules — and when the tracks could be powered down so bridge work could take place.

"By federal law, Amtrak controls the right of way under the bridge," Consalvo explained. "They own the right of way and responsibility. They dictate to MassDOT the hours they can actually work."

For months, Amtrak would greenlight small overnight windows for work to take place, Consalvo said. Crews would often have only an hour or less for repairs before they had to clear the way for train service to resume.

In an email, a MassDOT a spokesperson said the agency "makes every attempt to work collaboratively with Amtrak to gain right of way access" during the closure and acknowledged “competing needs” for train service and repair work that "must be balanced."

Meanwhile, traffic backed up at rush hour on the surrounding streets, police worked the intersections, and businesses took a hit.

Thien Simpson is executive director of the nonprofit Hyde Park Main Streets. She said at least five stores on River Street went under after the bridge shut down. Among them were a handful of beauty salons that closed “because they didn’t have the foot traffic anymore,” Simpson said. Another was an insurance office "that was like a legacy business that had been here for decades.”

By last spring, frustration in Hyde Park was running high. Under pressure from residents, city and state officials asked the U.S. Department of Transportation and Amtrak to allow MassDot more access to the bridge.

Boston City Councilor Enrique Pepén called the letter a "big deal" to getting "all levels of government on the same page." He credits the document with bringing federal and state players together.

"Being able to be like,'Yo, we need attention here. Pay attention to this. Yes, it's a small bridge, but it's impacting a lot of people,' " he said.

By last fall, the state was granted more time, including daytime hours and weekends, to work on a temporary measure that would reopen the bridge to traffic, while a new bridge is built offsite. They reinforced the bridge to make it safe enough for cars and to ensure it wouldn’t collapse onto the train tracks.

Two days before Christmas, the state opened the bridge to traffic.

Deez, the resident advocating on social media about the bridge, called it a “Christmas miracle,” and posted a video of residents honking and celebrating as they crossed the reopened span.

In January, longtime business owner Dimitrios Vorvis — he goes by Jimmy — called the flow of cars by his Hyde Park Cleansers “beautiful.” His business is located half a block from the bridge, and while he says traffic has improved, his business has not.

“People don’t show up, people I knew by face,” Vorvis said. “They might come here and there, maybe once or twice a year, but not monthly like they used to.” He thinks the bridge inconvenience may have pushed customers to other dry cleaners.

Some are having a bit more luck. Moise Baez, a barber at Sharps Barbershop, said in Spanish that business has picked up now that people can see the shops better.

But Hyde Park’s River Street Bridge problems aren’t completely over. MassDOT still plans to replace the entire structure. The agency is designing a new bridge that will be built offsite and then installed in the next two or three years.

In an emailed statement a MassDOT spokesperson said the agency "is committed to working with the community to ensure that this project is done in a safe and efficient way."

Consalvo said the bridge closure was “by far the number one issue” his constituents were concerned about over the last two years. So, while there's still more work to come, for now, he said, "It's great to have number one crossed off the list.”

When it comes to bridges, Phineas Baxandall is a go-to guy. The policy director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, he co-authored a 2022 report analyzing the state of bridges in the state. The report found the average lifespan of a bridge in the U.S. is 44 years old; in Massachusetts, that average is about 56 years old.

In an interview with WBUR he said the state has "many, many bridges" over 100 years old, and "past what their expected life is. And they're more expensive to maintain, and they're often going to be breaking down."

Across Massachusetts, more than 750 bridges are slated for rehabilitation, preservation or replacement, according to MassDOT.

To some extent, Baxandall said, the state is "doing a terrible job because we have lots of bridges that are in bad shape, so many that are structurally deficient." On the other hand, he said, "We're doing an admirable job in that we keep track of them and we close them before they have catastrophic kinds of failures."