Last week, a ribbon cutting ceremony celebrated the official opening of the New Boston Street Bridge in Woburn, MA. This project restored a crucial connection over the MBTA tracks between the North Woburn industrial park on New Boston Street, the Town of Wilmington, and East Woburn’s Commerce Way corridor by the I-93 flyover ramp.
The bridge is named in honor of Vietnam Veterans, and the ceremony included a special honor to those from Woburn who lost their lives in combat.
VHB led the project design, permitting, and construction support services for the bridge as part of our on-call contract with the City of Woburn. Our multi-disciplinary team performed early traffic studies and bridge concepts and continued with final design, permitting, and right-of-way for the City, collaborating with our partners at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT). The complex design features long retaining walls along the bridge approaches to climb up and over the roadway and a complex, heavily skewed three-span bridge over a railroad and within an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) superfund site.
“The re-establishment of this bridge crossing will benefit commuters, residents, and visitors of Woburn by offering much easier connections across the tracks to public transportation options at the Anderson Regional Transportation Center,” said Senior Project Manager Shanta Keller. “We’re excited that this restoration will support the economic development on both sides of New Boston Street.”
After a fire destroyed the previous bridge in 1972, this critical link in north Woburn remained fractured with two dead end roads, until city officials lobbied the state to restore the bridge. The replacement is part of a $25 million MassDOT project to reconstruct the New Boston Street crossing over the MBTA Commuter Rail New Hampshire Main Line. In addition to two 11-foot-wide car lanes, the bridge includes 5.5-foot-wide sidewalks on either side of the structure that are separated by a safety guardrail, providing a vital pedestrian connection between the corridors.
Recently, the New Boston Street and Commerce Way area has undergone a major economic transformation. Previously consisting of under-utilized industrial era manufacturing buildings and factories, the space now comprises thousands of new apartments across multiple complexes and a wide range of businesses that employ about 5,000 workers. Several upcoming new developments are in the works, including a new life sciences campus and a mixed-use development with as many as 400 additional apartments.
The restoration of this bridge connection will be critical to advancing additional redevelopment opportunities for the City of Woburn and the surrounding towns.
Learn how VHB’s structural engineering services help improve mobility for the traveling public.
