A constellation of transportation planners, elected officials and community groups embarked Wednesday on a campaign to think about a massive project coming into focus on the horizon: replacing the Tobin Bridge.
Over the next 18 months, a state working group will examine options to succeed the 74-year-old bridge that connects Chelsea and Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. Its scope is broad, and will focus on threads such as how to balance vehicular traffic with public transit and the best way to minimize upheaval during construction.
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The eventual project is all but certain to be enormously disruptive, given the tens of thousands of vehicles — 87,000 per typical weekday last year — that rely on the bridge that carries Route 1 over the Mystic River. But changes are also years away: the planning study alone will not be complete until the summer of 2026, according to a slide presented Wednesday.