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I doubt there will be many lane closures for the next decade. There's no more Federal money and the state will move on to other projects. After all, it is the longest bridge in the world. It goes from Somerset to Portugal

I first heard that joke when the bridge was being built 50 years ago....

I live in Bristol on the Warren border off Rt. 136 and work in Providence. At 3am with no traffic I can make the ride into Providence in 20 minutes. But unfortunately I have to leave at 7am, and with just the trek along Rt. 136 to get to the highway exit during school season with the bus traffic can easily take me 20 minutes, and after that it's another 20 to get to the city. With working in the Smith Hill section of the city, and on a bad traffic day, from highway exit to my work place I can easily add on another 20 minutes of travel time.

Now if I want to go to the closest ocean beach to me which is 2nd Beach in Middletown, again leaving at 3am I can make it there in 20 minutes going in the opposite direction on Rt. 136. If I decide to head out at 10am on a Saturday, the traffic is already bad on Rt. 136. When I finally make it to the Mt. Hope Bridge more often than not work is being on the bridge so I hit my next delay. Then after that it is a flip a coin to either go East or West Main Road which both can be pretty slow going in the summer. So basically by the time I get to the beach and park the car I am looking at close to an hour of travel time.

Do consider R.I.'s prime beach season is pretty much July and August, and if you are working and can only go to the beach on the weekends that is pretty much 6 trips or less depending on the weather or if you have other plans for some of those summer weekends. With you working and having to travel into Providence 5 days a week all season you may want to take off your list proximity to the beach and concentrate on education of your kids and ease of travel to work in Providence. In addition to the great school systems of Barrington and East Greenwich which rides into Providence aren't too bad, Lincoln is another town relatively close to Providence that also has a pretty good school system but not near the beach. Several of my Bristol neighbors relocated to Lincoln a few years back to ease their work travel into Providence as well as for the better school system that Lincoln has over Bristol. With my former neighbors putting in pools in their yards of their Lincoln homes their kids now could care less if they ever go to the beach in the summer.

when I lived in RI, I learned that if I wanted to go to the beach, live there and deal with the longer daily commute to Providence. And so when the children were little, we moved to just outside of Wickford. That town beach was perfect until the teen years when my oldest wanted more from the beach. We moved to just outside Wakefield where I could pop on over to Narragansett beach after work in about 10 minutes or head to any of the bigger beaches for an extra 10 minute drive. Weekends were easy, just had to beat everyone else there.

Travelling to the beaches from anywhere north of South County was a ridiculous trip, and I'm originally from NJ. I don't want to spend an hour or so in traffic to get to a beach. So I elected for the hour travel to work each day, and again an hour for the ride home.

It's what it is - quick to the beach and long to work or vice versa.