"For so long, these towers have stood as part of Norwalk's skyline," Mayor Barbara Smyth said at the North Water Street lot on September 9, as state and local officials announced the removal of the two old Walk Bridge towers. "While there is certainly history in what we are saying goodbye to today, there is also immense excitement about what comes next."
The towers are 234 feet of steel and have stood over the Norwalk River for more than a century. The lift towers replacing them will be about 100 feet shorter, so the skyline change is permanent. The disruption has firm limits. It falls on a handful of fall weekends, on East Norwalk's station for about three weeks, and on a few blocks of road near the river. Metro-North Railroad President Justin Vonashek said Monday morning commutes will not be affected. If you know where those limits are, this fall in SoNo and East Norwalk should be manageable.
Why the towers come first
The towers have to go before anything else. The Walk Bridge opened in 1896, and Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto called it the oldest remaining movable bridge on the Northeast Corridor. He said it carries about 175 trains and 125,000 passengers each day. Before the towers can come down, crews must take out 31 cables strung between them, about nine miles of wire in total.
Much of the setup is already finished and out of sight. Wayne Gagnon, Eversource's director of transmission project management and construction, said the utility moved two live 115-kilovolt power lines that used to run above the bridge. They now travel underground through local streets and beneath the Norwalk River, work he said supported more than 150 union jobs over nine years. Power lines and rail systems have also been rerouted underground beneath the riverbed.
After the towers are gone, the project's published sequence has crews dismantling the existing bridge. The new movable lift bridge and its approach spans come in later phases, with the new bridge expected in service in 2030. The project has not published an exact date or method for the towers' final removal. For now, the best description is that the work is underway this fall, beginning with the cables.
Some Norwalk residents are taking the change personally. In comments under NancyOnNorwalk's September 10 story, Beverly Lysobey wrote that she was sad to lose a historic part of the skyline. Eucalitto called the removal "the start of a dramatic change to the city of Norwalk's skyline."
The weekend calendar, and where it stands now
The cable removal needs track outages, and the state put them on weekends. Eucalitto said the work calls for five weekend train outages between September 12 and November 1, plus two extra weekends held in reserve for bad weather. As of September 30, the hardest weekends are already over. Here are the dated weekends Metro-North and CTDOT have published:
| Weekend | Work | Train service through the work zone | Seats vs. a typical weekend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept. 12–13 | Wire demolition | Diesel trains about every 90 minutes | About 55% fewer |
| Sept. 19–20 | Wire demolition | Diesel trains about every 90 minutes | About 55% fewer |
| Oct. 10–11 | High tower work | Electric trains in scheduled work windows, about five trains per window | About 30% fewer |
| Oct. 17–18 | High tower work | Electric trains in scheduled work windows, about five trains per window | About 30% fewer |
The fifth weekend has no published date yet. A September 11 Greenwich Beacon report said it had not been specified. Metro-North said it would release special schedules for the October weekends in late September. Its alerts page and the TrainTime app are the places to check before any October weekend trip.
On affected weekends, Norwalk sits right at the edge of the service plan. CTDOT says main-line trains run between Grand Central and South Norwalk, express between Grand Central and Stamford and local between Stamford and South Norwalk. A shuttle train covers New Haven to Bridgeport. For a Saturday trip into Manhattan from South Norwalk, that means trains still run without crossing the work zone. Trips east toward Bridgeport and New Haven take the biggest hit. CTDOT is offering free parking at the Stamford Transportation Center on work weekends. Its release lists extra paid parking at the South Norwalk Parking Garage, though NancyOnNorwalk reported Eucalitto describing South Norwalk parking as free too, so check before you count on it. Amtrak service between New York and New Haven will also be extremely limited on these weekends.
Three weeks without East Norwalk station
The weekend outages end on Sunday night, but the East Norwalk closure runs through the workweek too. No trains will stop at East Norwalk in either direction from Saturday, September 26 through Sunday, October 18. Riders are sent to South Norwalk or Westport. The north-side lot is closed. The project bulletin says East Norwalk parking permits are honored at the 182 East Avenue commuter lot. NancyOnNorwalk, citing a city announcement, reported that permit parkers can also use the South Norwalk station, and that East Norwalk permit holders can park on Madison Street and walk about a quarter mile to South Norwalk. With the two sources giving different instructions, confirm with the city before relying on any one lot. NancyOnNorwalk reported that the station is scheduled to reopen Monday, October 19.
The closure has drawn the most direct local pushback this fall. Diane Cece of the East Norwalk Neighborhood Association said it puts a burden on commuters and criticized the lack of a dedicated shuttle. The article later added that Norwalk Transit's Route 5 would run more often and for longer hours to help riders connect between East and South Norwalk. Norwalk Transit has posted the Route 5 extra service schedule.
This is the part of the fall when "Monday commutes are unaffected" is not quite true for everyone. The main-line schedule holds on weekdays, but East Norwalk riders get an extra leg on each end of their trip until October 19.
On the street and on the river
Around the bridge itself, the road impact is specific and posted week by week. The walkbridgect.com bulletin for the week of September 28 lists:
- North Water Street: closed between Marshall Street and Washington Street on Monday from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Friday through Sunday from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
- Cemetery Street: closed between East Avenue and Gregory Boulevard from 7:00 a.m. Monday, September 28 through 8:00 p.m. Friday, October 2.
- East Avenue: traffic shifted to the west side of the road on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for drainage work, with pedestrians detoured along Gregory Boulevard and Cemetery Street.
- East Avenue at Fort Point Street: closed weeknights from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
Washington Street is the boundary of the North Water Street closure, and the bulletin does not list Washington Street itself as closed. That matters for the SoNo strip, which got a new morning stop this spring when Norwalk Bagel Co. opened at 133 Washington St. on May 13. In August, when North Water Street closed between Washington and Marshall Streets for high-tower wire work, Patch reported that pedestrian access stayed open.
Work at the bridge runs 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. The same bulletin lists partial closures on the Norwalk River east and west of the channel. The project notes that schedules can change with weather, so the weekly bulletin and its construction map are more reliable than any plan made a week ahead.
What the disruption is for
Those limits make more sense against the bridge's record. Eucalitto said the bridge was last rehabilitated in 1990 and kept failing afterward, with 12 failures in 2011, 16 in 2013, and two in a single two-week stretch in 2014. Vonashek said the bridge opened more than 40 times in 2025, and each opening shuts down all four tracks until it locks back into place.
State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said disruptions on the Northeast Corridor cost the regional economy more than $100 million a day. The replacement is a dual-span vertical lift bridge. More than 250 workers are on the job, and Eucalitto said the project is on track for completion in 2030. He said the project, along with other movable bridge upgrades and the state's Time for CT program, aims to cut about 25 minutes from the trip between New Haven and New York by 2035. Crews still need to upgrade several undergrade bridges and tracks on Norwalk's east side.
So the fall calendar looks like this. Two October weekends are confirmed, Oct. 10–11 and Oct. 17–18, and one more has no date yet. East Norwalk station is set to reopen October 19. The posted North Water Street closures change week to week. By November, the towers that have marked the river crossing since the 1890s will be on their way out, and the next landmark on the river won't be in service until 2030.
If you're a South Norwalk or East Norwalk homeowner wondering how the Walk Bridge years might affect getting around, the train commute, or the blocks near the river, Boost Real Estate Group is glad to share what we're seeing locally. Let's Connect.
