Quick fix for I-93 bridges begins

Concrete will then be poured over the connecting sections to reinforce and secure them, from about 2 to 10 a.m. Sunday. The remainder of Sunday is devoted to curing and testing the concrete, using a mobile lab parked on site, before striping the surface and installing temporary barriers by Monday morning. An asphalt finish will not be applied until after Labor Day.

As the clock ticked closer to the start of the project yesterday, Mizioch, the manager of the state’s highway design-build program, explained the process at the site of the first replacement, over Riverside Avenue.

New concrete support pillars and abutments were already in place below the deck; above deck, the bridge had been torch-cut to ease demolition. But otherwise it was the same bridge that had been there since the dawn of the interstate highway era.

If all goes according to plan, by this morning it will be gone, the new one all but done by tomorrow night.

“And just like that,’’ Mizioch said, “we’ll have replaced a bridge.’’

Eric Moskowitz can be reached at emoskowitz@globe.com.