Ask the city engineer, at 300 Orange St.
I went to the city engineers office and asked. The engineer said that he didn't know when the bridge would be finished, as the city is applying for some grants, i.e., they started this project without enough money to finish it, with no insurance to cover unexpected developments, like the mystery oil tank or gas pipeline. The engineer, guessed that the bridge might be done sometime after 2012. Maybe 2020, 2050? Who knows?
I'm afraid we have another Ferry Street bridge situation - we're looking at 10+ years, before some intervention from Rosa DeLauro, to clean up the mess.

That's really frustrating. What upsets me more is that they brought me into a meeting to show me this website they were going to use to keep us updated but I have not seen anything and don't even know how to find that site anymore. It seems like they only wanted to keep us updated if things were going smoothly.

it's ok!
they don't live on side streets where cars speed through them trying to get around a detour that annoys them!
they don't have to live with constantly aggressive and disrespectful drivers irritated at the presence of pedestrians on their way out of town!

it makes us stronger, right?

This is a major thoroughfare, not a side street. What an embarrassment of a country that we can't finish a simple bridge project in a reasonable amount of time!

ed,
i know, i meant to say that the side streets around it are now overburdened with the traffic trying to get out of town...

but here's an update:

"The State Street Bridge (which is in the process of being removed and remediated) is tentatively scheduled to begin reconstruction early next month. The rebuilding process will take approximately nine months. As you may have heard, they ran into some complications earlier this year when they unexpectedly had to remove some additional piping and conduct some environmental remediation. Look forward to State Street reopening sometime late next year!"
-from Justin Elicker, ward 10 Alderman

Thanks for the update from Justin Juli. The issue has been viewed 134 times already so there seems to be some interest from others in this as well.

Apparently some previously unknown contamination was discovered in the Mill River directly adjacent to the bridge. DEEP and DOT are investigating this, and it is holding up the completion of construction. Roland Lemar discussed it recently at the East Rock CMT meeting -- he's probably the one to ask for more details.

The State Street Bridge was closed for replacement in October of 2010.  The original completion date was scheduled in October of 2011.  
 
During the construction of the west abutment, contaminated ground water was discovered upon beginning excavation. The volume of contaminated ground water is excessive and the ground water treatment facility onsite and the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Agency are not able to handle that volume of contaminated water being generated. 
 
The Department of Transportation together with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection conducted a field investigation and it appears that the dewatering operation drew contaminants from a nearby area beyond the construction activities.  It was determined that to handle the contaminated ground water volume the ground water treatment facility required modifications.  In addition, a different construction technique needs to be developed to minimize the infiltration. 
  
The exact response i received from the dot last week about the status of the bridge is as follows;

"The city of New Haven and the Department of Transportation are developing a new design for the abutments and wingwalls to minimize the infiltration, this design will be completed soon and hopefully activities will restart in December.  We will continue to work to address this unforeseen site condition in a timely manner in order to complete the new State Street Bridge as quickly as possible.

Posted Above is the exact response I received from the state dot when I asked them about the status of the bridge last week. sorry for the double post, using copy and paste on my phone is still a little tricky

Thank you for the update Roland!

Any chance they will be adding pedestrian lighting here?

FYI as i sat at the rice pot today, i counted 46 cars speeding towards the bridge that was out, only to turn around. i saw that many in the time it took to eat a few noodles. (half an hour)

better signage is needed.

Two New Haven Police cars, with their emergency lights on, heading West, and two New Haven Fire Department trucks, heading East, were both stuck on Willow St., because of the overflow of traffic, onto Willow St., from State St.

The State St. bridge closure is creating traffic havoc in East Rock, and is a public safety and health issue, due to the impediment of emergency vehicles and the increase in air pollution due to traffic jams on Willow St.

"The city of New Haven and the Department of Transportation are developing a new design for the abutments and wingwalls to minimize the infiltration, this design will be completed soon and hopefully activities will restart in December." So where is the plan? December has come and gone...

Can we outsource the city engineering department (City Plan Dept. too...) to India or China? - the bridge would be finished by now.

This is a ConnDOT managed project. The City is reaching out to ConnDOT to set up a briefing for the neighborhood, and will work with the local alders and the management team to publicize when a date is set.

The briefing happened last week. Rob, can you give us the update?

Rob was not at the meeting. The bridge will remain closed for another year. I hope that the Route 34 debacle does not begin until this bridge re-opens. How do you say traffic nightmare in East Rock?

I'm assuming most people have seen the article in the New Haven Independent about the meeting (http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/a_bridge_too_far_from_complete/). Unfortunately the completion of the bridge is slated for the end of 2013.

Jessica Holmes and I met with CONNDOT's maintenance crews on site earlier this week to discuss ways to improve the area in the meantime. CONNDOT unfortunately did not agree to regularly clean and maintain the area, but they did agree to clean up some trash, sweep some of the sidewalks that are covered in debris, take care of some of the weeds, lock the gates that are abutting the highway and have been unlocked, and so on. If people give other specific requests, I can forward them on to CONNDOT as well.

Justin Elicker
Ward 10 Alderman
justin.elicker@gmail.com

There is a rumor that the piers of the I-91 Interstate bridge that goes over this bridge have been undermined due to combination of poor design and inept construction oversight. So the first sign of progress will come when CTDOT advertises for the replacement of the I-91 bridge over State Street bridge, my guess 2020?

I actually think this project goes well with the rest of the failed little state of Connecticut and the ghetto New Haven and the rest of the garbage that's there.

I hope the previous comment doesn’t turn out to be entirely accurate, however there is some previous history with the Mianus River Bridge collapse in 1983, so ConnDOT and its crony culture appears to have plenty of experience with this types of stupidities.

Neither the CT DOT or the City of New Haven gives two ***** about this project. I even doubt the "water pollution" issue, as with every high tide, the construction site is inundated with water, so there is absolutely no way that enough ground water could be pumped and treated to make a bit of difference, r.e. "environmental remediation".

Icy313's comment seems plausible. The tidaI surge, from hurricane Sandy, completely covered the construction site, even overflowing the tide gates, and with the old bridge abutments gone, I can easily imagine the piers, supporting the I91 bridge, being undermined, by the scouring surge of water.

In 50 years, due to sea level rise, this bridge will be submerged anyway, but as I asked the CT DOT engineer, what the design life of this phantom structure will be, he laughed and said that it would be there after we were gone, which also seems plausible, as it probably will take twenty years to complete ( then fall apart in five years).

For what it's worth, I rode by the construction site, today, 12/28/2012, and there are people working! Looks like they are driving piles into the river bed.

Folks, Come to the bridge at 10 AM this morning. Dick Miller and Alderman Holmes will be giving a tour and an update.

I wasn't able to attend - I was working to pay taxes to pay for the salaries, interest on the bonds, etc. associated with the inflating costs of this bridge milking project.
Any updates on what the latest story is?

They said December 2013...

Are nice pedestrian lights and buffered bike lanes being added on the new bridge, or is this yet another only-for-cars-even-though-it's-a-major-city kind of project?

According to the [outgoing] city engineer and the state DOT spokesman: no. The bridge will be wider to accommodate faster car and truck traffic, with some lines painted to funnel speeding vehicles down to one lane. Yet another failed DOT project. The CT DOT motto should be: "Building yesterday's roads for the future." Peak oil, CO2 reduction, reducing vehicle deaths, increasing quality of life, even doing mediocre work are not part of the CT DOT mission. On the other hand, they do corruption really well.

This issue is being closed as there is more up to date information that is being posted here:
http://seeclickfix.com/issues/672845