Brookline transportation officials are moving forward with plans to rebuild the Davis Path Footbridge across the Green Line D tracks near Brookline Village, applying for a federal grant to help fund the $14 million project.
The 112-year-old bridge connecting White Place with Boylston Street near the Old Lincoln School was demolished in 2020 when engineers found it was structurally unsound and dangerous.
Residents felt “a sense of disconnection between neighborhoods and public facilities” after the bridge came down and they asked for a replacement, said Brookline’s construction project coordinator Bill Smith.
So the town hired the consulting firm WSP last summer to make plans to rebuild the bridge, and the firm’s current timeline suggests construction could start by 2026.
The design by Urban Idea Lab, a firm working with WSP, would include a ramp on one side of the bridge, and an elevator on the other. The older bridge only had stairs, making it inaccessible for people in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues.
“The bridge itself is really quite small,” said Etty Padmodipoetro, the founder and principal at the design firm. “What’s really challenging is trying to figure out how we can make this much more inclusive and accessible to everyone.”
The bridge entrance on the north side, on White Place, is a “constrained site,” squeezed in between houses, Padmodipoetro said.
The town applied for a federal “Reconnecting Communities” grant last week which could cover up to $9.5 million of the project, but would require a “local match” from the town of $2.4 million.
The roughly $14 million project proposal includes assumptions about inflation, said Scott Schreiber of WSP.
“We’ve estimated $9 million in construction costs, and another $2.7 million is contingency or escalation, which includes inflation,” he said. “Inflation, especially in the construction sector, has been large and unpredictable.”
(The town has already committed $1.9 million for the design portion of the project.)
Select Board Mike Sandman praised the work of the design team after it was presented at last week’s Select Board meeting. “When people look at the number, they say, ‘wow, that’s a huge number.’ But there’s really quite a lot of work that goes into this, and I think it’s an elegant solution,” Sandman said.
Video: Footage from the 2020 removal of the bridge (Video by Todd Kirrane)