Beverly's Kernwood Bridge To See 5 Months Of 1-Way Traffic Disruptions

UPDATED 1:30 p.m. to note the postponement of Thursday's public meeting.

BEVERLY, MA — The Kernwood Bridge connecting Beverly and Salem will be reduced to one-way alternating traffic for parts of the next five months as part of repair work to keep the bridge functional while the Hall-Whitaker Drawbridge remains closed after more than 2 1/2 years.

The state Department of Transportation said the one-way traffic on the bridge over the Danvers River will begin Monday and last from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. each weekday through March 31, 2025.

The announcement came ahead of a postponed public update on the timetable for a temporary Hall-Whitaker Bridge and reconstructed Kernwood Bridge scheduled for Thursday night at Beverly High School. MassDOT said it contacted the mayor's office to request to postpone the meeting to a date "we hope to be soon after Thanksgiving."

Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill said last month the hope with an accelerated design and bid schedule construction on the new Hall-Whitaker can now begin next summer. He said that would likely put the temporary replacement bridge on schedule to open "in the first half of 2027."

The Kernwood and original Hall-Whitaker bridge would then soon be torn down for complete reconstruction. The end-of-construction timeline was revised last year to 2032.

State Department of Transportation officials said in the fall of 2022 that Beverly residents may have to deal with 13 years or more of bridge construction and traffic disruptions before both bridges were finished.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)