Major changes ahead for Route 37, thanks to $25M federal grant. Here's your road map.

Decades after the idea of a highway encircling greater Providence and crossing Narragansett Bay died, Rhode Island highway planners want to remove some of the last vestiges of what would have been Interstate 895.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation this week was awarded a $25-million federal grant that the agency says will allow it to finish a multiphase $265-million overhaul of the Route 37 corridor that includes tearing down parts of a highway built to complete the never-realized interstate Providence beltway.

The most dramatic change in the new plans replaces the looping ramps and overpass where Route 37 terminates at Post Road in Warwick with a conventional stop-lighted surface intersection.

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The plan also calls for "right-sizing" Route 37, which was built to handle interstate freeway traffic volume but only goes between Post Road in Warwick and Route 295 in Cranston.

Exactly how much the highway will be narrowed has yet to be determined, DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin said.

The plan would also finish repairs to six bridges, including replacing the span over New London Avenue with a longer, higher bridge that could accommodate a high-frequency transit corridor beneath it. The DOT also says it will make "complete streets" improvements to New London Avenue to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

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Route 37 changes will accommodate a planned RIPTA transit line and a new bike route

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority's Transit Master Plan envisions a new mass transit service along New London Avenue to the Community College of Rhode Island's Knight Campus in Warwick.

The new transit line could be bus rapid transit or light rail — its form has not been determined — and RIPTA does not have funding for it, but the larger bridge would provide space for it if it happens.

The DOT's Route 37 plan also includes a new bicycle connection between the Washington Secondary Bike Path and Chapel View shopping center in Cranston.

Most of that new bike route, from Sherman Avenue to Meshanticut Valley Parkway, will be on-street, shared with cars. The portion from Meshanticut to Chapel View would be a separated path, according to maps included with the DOT's grant application.

Some of the references to the on-street bike route in grant materials describe it as an "advisory bike lane," in which automobiles share a single center lane with bicycles on either side. St. Martin did not confirm if that is the design the DOT has in mind.

This final phase of work on Route 37, including razing the Post Road ramps, the New London Avenue bridge and the bike lanes, is expected to cost $100 million.

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Why replace the overpass and ramps where Route 37 meets Post Road with a surface intersection?

The overpass over Post Road, which is now being buttressed with wooden supports, needs to be replaced anyway, and getting rid of it "would avoid long-term costs associated with maintaining the bridge while freeing approximately 9 acres of land in the footprint of the old ramps for economic development purposes," St. Martin wrote in an email.

When it was designed in the 1960s, planners expected that what became Route 37 would, as I-895, continue south and east through Warwick, across a never-built Narragansett Bay bridge to Barrington, then turn north into East Providence and Seekonk, Massachusetts, before eventually joining Route 295 in Attleboro.

But as the downsides of building freeways through populated areas became more apparent, opposition to I-895 in the suburbs it would have crossed became fierce.

After the original route was abandoned, a southern highway route was developed across Aquidneck Island, but that idea was also never completed.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Major alterations planned for Route 37 in RI with $25M federal grant