NORTH SMITHFIELD – The turnaround from Route 146 and 146A southbound to access northbound travel will be closing for good Friday night, with highway drivers to instead take an exit to head in the opposite direction.
Those on 146A, meanwhile, will have to get on 146 South at Greenville Road in order to hit the new exit that allows vehicles access to 146A North traveling into Woonsocket. The change will move the exit point for a turnaround to about one-quarter of a mile before its current location – prior to where the two highways merge.
The Rhode Island Department of Transportation announced the traffic shift Thursday as part of its ongoing $196 million Route 146 project, a disruptive but needed reconfiguration, replacement and repair of roads throughout the corridor. The project includes replacement of five bridges, eight miles of paving and the ongoing construction of a flyover bridge to whisk highway drivers over the Sayles Hill Road intersection, where travelers previously encountered the only traffic light on all of Route 146 in Rhode Island.
“The new traffic configuration is part of a total redesign of this intersection to make it safer and more efficient,” noted RIDOT in a release.
The old turnaround, accessible by a left-hand exit, will be permanently closed starting at night on Friday, Oct. 18. The change will eliminate a previously harrowing feat for drivers, where stopped traffic hoping to travel northbound had to merge into highway traffic traveling at full speed just before a road split.
A graphic showing the changes and detour for Route 146A South to Route 146 North is available at www.ridot.net/DetourMaps. The detour uses Smithfield Road to travel to Greenville Road and access Route 146 North, and will be in place until next spring, when RIDOT is scheduled to open a new portion of the Route 146/Route 146A interchange. The highways will eventually feature, “a diverging diamond interchange,” once work is complete, according to RIDOT.
A diverging diamond interchange, also called a, “double crossover diamond interchange,” is described as, “a subset of a diamond interchange, in which the opposing directions of travel on the non-freeway road cross each other on either side of the interchange so that traffic crossing the freeway on the overpass or underpass is operating on the opposite driving side from that which is customary for the jurisdiction,” according to Wikipedia.
“The entire Route 146 Project includes greatly needed improvements to the Route 146 corridor, making it safer, improving transit connections, and reducing congestion and vehicle emissions,” notes RIDOT. .
The project was funded in part by a $65 million federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant – the second largest the state ever received – which was secured by Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation. The entire project is expected to be finished in summer 2026.
RIDOT notes that all construction projects are subject to changes in schedule and scope depending on needs, circumstances, findings and weather.
For more information, visit www.ridot.net/Route146.
This will be the typical RIDOT disaster that Peter Alviti and the band of lazy union brothers is becoming know. Traffic will back up on 146A and the police will not be able to manage the traffic. A public outcry will happen and the proposed pattern will be changed.
Sounds like someone was never able to get a REALLY GOOD UNION job!
The major flaw with accessing 146 North in the new layout, is those drivers will use Hanton Road, and not travel to Greenville Rd. Doing so will turn that neiborhood’s traffic into what the Sayles Hill Road residents faced. I see another executive order and road closure coming. Chief Lafferty and Mr. Zwolenski might want to get ahead of this and start posting “No Thru Traffic” signs, and have police monitor the traffic in what was a quiet neighborhood.
It’s about time! That DEATH turnaround should have been closed MANY, MANY, years ago!