Gas Main Work on Broadway is Two Years Early

The gas main work ongoing on Broadway has torn up the road and caused detours as National Grid crews dug a deep trench along the busy city artery.

Though the timing might seem off with the Aquidneck Island Police Parade set for this weekend, David Graves, National Grid Spokesman, said the work is actually two years ahead of its original schedule to prevent the road from being ripped up once again after the road is overhauled in the next year or two.

"It made sense to do the work now," Graves said in an interview. "There's also sewer and water work and that's all going to be done at the same time so we're not going back in a year or two and ripping up new pavement."

It's no secret that Broadway is in rough shape, and it won't seem much better when this project, which is expected to last three weeks (and is nearly at that point), is completed.

But many of the problems with the road surface stem from the fact that utility work occurred after the last major repaving of the road, causing patches and lumps and bumps as crews covered up their work.

National Grid was going to do this work in about two years, but the city alerted the utility company of upcoming Broadway improvements, Graves said. That prompted the work to be moved up, resulting in the construction happening right now.

The work is tricky, Graves said, and in a city like Newport on a street like Broadway, crews expected the unexpected. 

"Obviously there are a lot of other utilities buried there and we have to be careful about not disrupting anybody else's water or sewer or anything else underground," Graves said. "When it's densely packed like that we have to be very careful and there's a lot of hand digging that's involved."