Wellesley Cedar Street bridge project to involve very heavy lifting

The Mass Department of Transportation was in Wellesley Tuesday night to discuss the upcoming replacement of the structurally deficient Cedar Street-over-Rte. 9 bridge, a roughly $4 million project that will provide some mid-summer drama for residents.

The “Heavy Lift” project, as the Mass DOT calls it, will involve building the new bridge at a staging site near the current bridge and then plopping the new one down where the old one was over July 4th weekend if all goes according to plan (see a video of an earlier Heavy Lift project). According to Mass DOT: “The scope of work includes the replacement of the bridge superstructure with a two-span continuous steel stringer superstructure with cast-in-place concrete deck.”

The project is funded under the state’s Accelerated Bridge Program, a follow-up to the Decelerated Bridge Program under which the notorious Rte. 16/9 bridge project finished last year.

Among other things, the new bridge will have more clearance than the current one.  Sounds like it the project will really get going in March, and expect some shuttle vans for transporting people around the project at times.