The East Bay Bike Path and the Warren Bike Path remain unconnected near Metacom Avenue. Riders traveling between them must leave the path and use local streets. The bridge on Warren Bike Path is now fixed, but the separate connection to the East Bay Bike Path remains incomplete.
The bridge in question spans the Kickemuit River on the Warren Bike Path, a short, tree-lined mile of former rail line running from Long Lane to the river, past Kickemuit Middle School, Hugh Cole Elementary, and Warren Recreation Park before ending in an 18-acre riverside park called The Meadows. The original span there was destroyed by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 and sat as a stub for roughly sixty years, a bike path that quite literally went nowhere. Rebuilding it became a slow-motion town saga: RIDOT broke ground in 2021 as part of a $5.85 million Safe Routes to School project, then watched the job stall in 2023 when the contractor, Cardi Corporation, hit financial trouble and had to hand the site to a new subcontractor mid-build. By January 2026, town officials confirmed the 165-foot composite span was finished and already carrying pedestrians and cyclists across the river for the first time since the Roosevelt administration.
That is the visible win, the kind of thing a ribbon-cutting photo captures well. It is also, if you actually ride the corridor, not the part that matters most.
What the bridge doesn't fix
The bridge reconnects the two halves of Warren's own short bike path. It does not connect that path to the East Bay Bike Path, the Rail-Trail Hall of Fame route that runs from Bristol up through Warren and Barrington toward Providence and is the reason most East Bay residents own a bike rack in the first place. The two trails sit less than two miles apart, and the missing link between them is a stretch of maybe a quarter mile near Metacom Avenue that remains unbuilt.
Right now, the workaround looks like this: coming from the East Bay Bike Path, you exit onto Franklin Street, cross Metacom Avenue at a signaled crossing, then thread through Child Street and West Street to reach River View Street and the bridge. It works. It is also a patchwork of sidewalks and residential turns, not a trail, and it is the kind of route that reads fine on a trail app and feels different at 7 a.m. with a kid on the back of your bike.
In December 2024, EastBayRI.com reported that Joseph DePasquale, days after being voted in as council president, called the fight a conundrum 23 years in the making. Planning Board Chairman Fred Massie had already flagged the missing connector as the one piece left to solve. As EastBayRI.com reported, the specifics came into focus at a January 13, 2026 meeting, when Councilor Louis Rego asked whether the old railroad right-of-way, the same one the rest of the path follows, could carry the extension. DePasquale said yes, in theory, tracing a route along the tracks at Metacom between the 426 Fitness Center and the Dollar General, land a developer had actually set aside for exactly this purpose years earlier during a zoning approval. The extension still needs funding. An earlier version of the route drew objections from neighbors roughly fifteen years ago.
The open bridge is one part of the corridor; the nearby businesses and fall events offer other reasons to explore it.
Riding the loop while you wait
None of that argues against getting on your bike this fall. It argues for knowing the corridor has changed in ways that have nothing to do with the spur debate.
In Barrington, Aldeia Coffeehouse opened this year from Maggie Mulvena, the founder of the Feast & Fettle meal delivery service, built around Portuguese-inspired coffee, pastries, and a small run of ceramics, open Wednesday through Monday. A few miles up Metacom, the former Newport Creamery site has been bought by the Blount family and is being rebuilt as Barrington Creamery, a community restaurant slated to reopen in 2027 with classic creamery staples alongside a few dishes pulled from the broader Blount menu.
In Warren, the food incubator Hope & Main still runs its Wednesday evening market out of a converted schoolhouse on Main Street, one of the few weekly draws in town that pulls a crowd regardless of season. Down on Water Street, Kingfish has settled into a rhythm of $2 oyster shucks on Mondays and a Thursday-through-Monday schedule, taking some reservations but leaning into walk-in traffic by design, according to owners Luke Mersfelder and Brittany Simons. A second-floor spot above La Pinata, Crescent Moon Café, has become one of the newer breakfast destinations on Main Street, and Consign & Design Marketplace on Metacom Avenue has been drawing a steady stream of browsers since opening in late 2025.
Warren's Art Night just wrapped for the month on August 27, but the fall calendar keeps going: Folk at the Farm VI lands September 27, and the Warren Walkabout, the town's open-studio, sidewalk-sale, historic-tour weekend, runs both October 18 and October 25. Both remaining dates sit within walking distance of the bridge, which means a ride along the Warren Bike Path and back can now double as an errand run instead of just a workout.
| What's finished | What isn't |
|---|---|
| The Kickemuit River bridge itself (open, in use as of early 2026) | The quarter-mile connector between the bridge and Metacom Avenue |
| Funding for the bridge ($5.85 million, Safe Routes to School grant) | Funding for the northern spur (no dedicated source yet identified) |
| The food and retail scene along the corridor (Aldeia, Kingfish, Hope & Main, Consign & Design) | A continuous, marked route from Bristol to the Kickemuit River |
The remaining connection
The bridge on Warren Bike Path is open, while the proposed connector to the East Bay Bike Path remains unfunded. The potential route has been discussed, but the connection is still incomplete.
It is worth riding this fall either way. Aldeia will still make you a good cup of coffee whether or not the spur ever gets built, and the Walkabout doesn't care what Metacom Avenue looks like on a map.
If you already live along this stretch of shoreline and want the kind of neighbor's-eye read on what's changing here beyond the bike path, Robert Rutley works Barrington, Bristol, and Warren daily as part of The Blackstone Team at Mott & Chace Sotheby's International Realty. When you're ready for a conversation about the East Bay, whether that's this year or a few years from now, Request a Concierge Home Valuation and start with someone who already knows the difference between a finished bridge and a finished corridor.
