The new Flatbush Avenue Bridge in West Hartford is nearing completion and is set to reopen early Saturday morning, 10 days ahead of schedule.
The bridge will officially open early Saturday morning, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday at 2 p.m. The ceremony will be held at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and New Park Avenue and will feature a number of local community leaders, along with Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, state Dept. of Transportation Commissioner James P. Redeker and officials from the Federal Highway Administration.
The bridge is part of a bigger $23.1 million CTfastrak project in West Hartford and Hartford and is designed to carry traffic over the Amtrak rail line and CTfastrak busway, which is being built along an abandoned railway from New Britain to Newington.
The Flatbush Avenue project also included the reconstruction of the intersections at New Park and Newfield avenues.
The bridge includes four lanes of traffic and a pedestrian walkway, the completion of which “provides significant benefits to the community to improve safety, pedestrian and bicycle access, vehicular movements and traffic flow and the promotion of transit-oriented development in the area,” according to DOT spokesman Judd Everhart, in a release.
Construction on the bridge began Oct. 8 and was originally scheduled to last three weeks.
