On a Monday afternoon in April 2026, a small crowd gathered at 106 County Road, near the Barrington River, and finally cut a ribbon that had been waiting almost seven years to be cut. Governor Dan McKee, Senator Jack Reed, and Congressman Gabe Amo took turns at the microphone. Cyclists who had detoured onto the Route 114 sidewalks since November 2019 rode across two brand-new bridges for the first time. One of them told a WPRI reporter that the new span was, in her words, "100 times better than I thought it would be."
If you live in Barrington, you already knew the detour. You knew the boardwalk that RIDOT bolted onto the road bridge in 2021 as a stopgap. You knew what it felt like to lose the quietest stretch of the path for most of a decade.
Here is what is worth knowing now that it is back: the reopening is not just a restored commute. It quietly repositions Barrington as the middle of the ride rather than a place you route around. The town's stretch of the path now has infrastructure it never had before, and the small businesses along County Road and Maple Avenue are suddenly the natural coffee-and-bagel stop for anyone doing the full 14.5 miles from Providence to Bristol.
What actually changed at Police Cove Park
The two old trestles were built in the 1880s for the Providence and Bristol Railroad and converted to bike use in the 1980s. RIDOT closed them in the fall of 2019 because severe deterioration made them unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians. What replaced them is not a like-for-like rebuild.
Interim RIDOT Director Robert Rocchio told the crowd that each new bridge is roughly 300 feet long and 14 feet wide, and that RIDOT built a fishing pier on the Police Cove Park side of the river and a bulkhead-style overlook for fishing on the Sowams Road side of the Warren bike path bridge. Those two additions matter. The old trestles were used informally by anglers for years, and that use became one of the sticking points during the design phase. The new structures were engineered with those anglers in mind.
For a Barrington resident, that means the walk from the Police Cove Park parking lot at 100 to 106 County Road now ends at an actual pier, not a shoulder pull-off. You can pack a rod, walk your kids down, and fish the tidal mouth of the Barrington River without competing with cyclists for space on a narrow crossing.
The financials give you a sense of how contested the project was. Providence Business News put the total at about $24 million, a figure that ran into numerous roadblocks over the years, including conflict between RIDOT, the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, and anglers who commonly used the old bridges for fishing. WPRI reported the final number closer to $25.9 million, paid for with both state and federal funds. Wikipedia's timeline shows the federal appropriations came in two tranches: Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse secured a total of $14 million, $5 million in March 2022 and another $9 million in August. Without that money, the project probably would have stalled.
Barrington sits in the middle of the ride, not at the end
Look at the phases of how the path was originally built. Phase 1 ran from Riverside Square to Barrington County Road at 4.17 miles, Phase 2 from County Road, Barrington to Franklin Street, Warren at 2.38 miles, Phase 3 from Franklin Street, Warren to Independence Park, Bristol at 3.87 miles, and Phase 4 from Riverside Square to India Point Park, Providence at 3.98 miles.
County Road is a hinge. It is the exact point where the ride switches character, from the East Providence and Riverside stretch that hugs Veterans Memorial Parkway into the softer, marsh-lined miles through Barrington and Warren. Riders coming south from Providence hit Barrington roughly halfway through a full one-way ride. Riders coming north from Bristol hit it about six miles in. That geometry did not matter much when the two bridges were out, because the detour forced everyone off the path and onto a road-bridge sidewalk. Now that the trail is continuous again, Barrington is the natural rest stop.
That is a real shift. The full 14.5-mile East Bay Bike Path is now restored, providing a continuous route from Providence to Bristol, and the Barrington site now features a new public fishing pier, further expanding recreational opportunities along the waterfront. The town's role as connective tissue used to be theoretical. It is now the actual experience of the ride.
A morning loop from your side of the river
Here is the shape of a two-hour Saturday that works for a Barrington resident who wants to test the new bridges without committing to a full Providence run.
Start with coffee. Leon's Cafe & Catering on Maple Avenue serves breakfast and lunch Wednesday through Sunday. Discover Newport's Barrington guide notes that items include the Tomato and Asparagus Eggs Benedict for breakfast or the classic Eggplant Parmigiano sandwich for lunch, and its location right near the East Bay Bike Path makes it a natural fuel stop before an afternoon of biking or walking. If the line is long, Vienna Bakery, Blue Kangaroo Café, Black Pear, or Sip & Bite are all reasonable substitutes for coffee and a light bite before you clip in.
From Police Cove Park, ride north across the new Barrington River bridge and stop. This is the moment worth pausing for. You have crossed the same alignment that the Providence and Bristol Railroad used starting in the 1880s, on structural steel that was fabricated and installed a hundred and forty years later. Look downstream toward Hundred Acre Cove. This is one of the coastal marshes considered one of the 50 most important coastal marshes between Long Island and Cape Cod by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Turn around, cross back, and ride south across the Palmer River bridge into Warren. Total distance from Police Cove Park to the Warren side of the second bridge and back is under four miles. You will be home before the coffee wears off.
The southbound version, when you want more
If you have three hours instead of two, keep going south from the Palmer River bridge into downtown Warren. RIDOT's own description of the path notes that shortly after picking up the path at the Crescent Street access point, you cross Market Street and Child Street in Warren, and nearby are many shops and restaurants in the Main Street area and near Warren's waterfront.
Warren's food scene has been quietly rebuilding. Sorelle "Off the Lane" at 437 Main Street, from the team behind Spaghetti Lane, opened as a sister concept last year, and Kingfish, from former Bywater chef Luke Mersfelder and his wife Britt Simons, is taking over the old Bywater space on State Street with a seafood-driven menu. Rhode Island Monthly's dining update reported that the couple is planning a seafood-focused menu, plus nostalgic classic dishes along with family-friendly menu choices, and they plan to open Kingfish in late summer. If you time a southbound ride for a Sunday evening, dinner in Warren becomes the reason for the trip and the ride is the appetizer.
Continue past Warren and you land at Independence Park in Bristol. Push north instead from Police Cove Park and you eventually cross the Washington Bridge into India Point Park in Providence. Rhode Island State Parks lists the eight parks the path stitches together: India Point Park in Providence, Bold Point and Squantum Woods in East Providence, Haines and Veteran's Memorial Park in Barrington, Burr's Hill Park in Warren, and Colt State Park, and Independence Park in Bristol.
Two of those eight are in Barrington. That is not a coincidence of counting. It reflects how much of the town's public shoreline the path organizes.
The fishing pier is doing something the trestles used to do informally
Talk to any longtime Barrington resident and you will hear about people who fished the old bridges for decades. When the trestles closed in 2019, that community lost its spot. The new pier at Police Cove Park is the first piece of public fishing infrastructure the town has added to that stretch in memory, and the bulkhead-style overlook on the Sowams Road side gives Warren-facing anglers their own dedicated space.
Rocchio put it plainly at the ribbon cutting: "It was worth every penny for the joy it will bring to so many bike riders, fishermen and women, children riding to school and nature lovers."
The "children riding to school" line is the one that actually matters for anyone weighing whether to raise kids on this side of the East Bay. A continuous, off-road bike path from Barrington schools into Warren and out toward East Providence is not a lifestyle amenity. It is a transportation choice that most Rhode Island towns cannot offer.
A few practical notes for the summer ahead
Police Cove Park's splash pad runs seasonally for the under-ten crowd, with benches for parents and, in local reviews, rarely a crowd. If your ride includes small kids, that is a built-in reward at the turnaround.
Barrington Town Beach is a short detour off the path. For the 2026 season the beach is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with facilities until 7 p.m., and cyclists and walkers do not pay to enter. Vehicles need seasonal or day passes.
The Barrington Public Library, the Arts Festival, the Harvest Festival, and the Tree Lighting form the town's civic calendar, and most of them fall within a short ride or walk of the County Road corridor. If you have not planned a weekend around the path in a few years because the detour made it not worth the effort, plan one now. The reason to be on this side of the river just got a lot more interesting.
If you are a Barrington homeowner and the reopening has you rethinking how you use your property, or if the new path has you eyeing a move closer to it, the Cathy Sousa Team knows this stretch of the East Bay as well as anyone. Request a Free Home Valuation or Schedule Your Free Consultation to talk through what your next move on the East Bay looks like.
