MassDOT Board Approves $79 Million Contract to Start Building Mystic River Bike and Pedestrian Bridge
On Wednesday afternoon, MassDOT’s board of directors voted unanimously to approve a $78.7 million design-build contract to start building the Mystic River Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge, a planned car-free connection between the Encore Casino site in Everett and Draw Seven Park in Somerville.
“It’s really exciting to see this happening,” said MassDOT director Thomas McGee, the former mayor of Lynn. “We’re talking about the connections with Everett and Somerville and to the MBTA and to the other trails on that side of the river, but on the other end there’s the final completion of the Northern Strand, heading into Lynn and Nahant Beach. So this is a direct connection.”
MassDOT expects the construction project to last about three years.
The winning contract’s price came in 27 percent over MassDOT’s previous estimates, which had previously pegged the bridge’s cost at around $62 million.
In addition to the $79 million design-build contract with Barletta Heavy Division, Inc., MassDOT has budgeted an additional $17 million for contingencies, flaggers, and engineering work, bringing the total cost to $96 million.
MassDOT’s Director of Major Projects Mike O’Dowd explained that prices for many MassDOT projects have been spiking thanks to “market volatility in materials, especially steel costs” as a result of President Trump’s tariffs.
There was an even bigger price discrepancy on another major project that the MassDOT board approved on Wednesday: the lowest bid for a rehabilitation contract for downtown Boston’s “big dig” tunnels came in nearly $27 million (35 percent) over MassDOT’s $76.3 million estimate.
