Brewerton Route 11 Bridge Removed in $33.6 Million Replacement Project

For four days in late July, boat traffic through Brewerton ran under a 5 mph order. On July 21, the New York State Canal Corporation held all vessel traffic on the Erie Canal at the hamlet while construction crews raised the old US Route 11 bridge and moved the span to the south side of the Oneida River. It was the most visible milestone yet in the $33.6 million replacement project that Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announced on February 19, 2025, and it played out in the middle of the canal system’s peak season, in front of the docks and waterfront businesses that give the hamlet its summer economy.

The Canal Corporation spelled out the operation in two formal Notices to Mariners. The first, issued July 6 at 10:18 p.m., told boaters that removal work over the water would begin Tuesday, July 7 and run through Friday, July 10, weather depending. A lit barge carrying white obstruction markers was anchored in the channel between buoys R “460” and R “462,” directly beneath the crossing the canal system logs as bridge E-64. Workboats operated under the deck and spotters were posted on both sides of the bridge.

The rules for anyone passing through were blunt. Boaters approaching the work zone had to “come to a full stop, sound horns, and proceed at a ‘No Wake’ speed,” the notice stated, and “under no circumstances exceed 5 mph.”

The second notice, issued July 20 at 1:10 p.m., described the finale. The barge shifted to the north side of the channel that day. On July 21, canal traffic was held entirely while the old bridge was raised and moved to the south side of the river. The Canal Corporation set a target of finishing the over channel removal by the end of the day Friday, July 24, again weather depending, and pointed boaters with questions to its Emergency Call Center at 833-538-1042.

A removal timed to the heart of the season

The timing matters because of where Brewerton sits. The hamlet straddles the Oneida River at the western outlet of Oneida Lake, with the Onondaga County town of Cicero on the south bank and the Oswego County town of Hastings on the north. Every recreational boater running the canal between the lake and the Three Rivers junction passes under the Route 11 crossing, and Lock E-23 sits just downstream. This is the 202nd consecutive year the state has opened the waterway, according to the Canal Corporation’s season notice. The 2026 season opened Friday, May 15 and runs through Wednesday, October 14 at 6 p.m. “There are no tolls or fees for recreational use of the Canal system this year,” the corporation noted in that same document.

So the removal of a steel highway truss above an active channel became a slow motion spectacle for July boaters, who passed the marked barges at idle speed, under the notice’s rules, where the green through truss had stood since the 1930s.

What the state is buying for $33.6 million

The project the truss lift belongs to was announced at the State Office Building in February 2025. The numbers from that announcement: a $33.6 million budget, a crossing that carries approximately 13,000 motorists a day, an existing bridge built in the early 20th century, and a last major rehabilitation all the way back in 1986. Kevin Gagnon, the general manager of Brewerton Pharmacy for 30 years, put the age in plainer terms to NewsChannel 9 in January, calling the structure nearly 100 years old and the replacement a necessary project.

“New York State has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to investing in communities through the revitalization of its infrastructure,” Hochul said in the announcement. The release also named NYSDOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, Cicero Town Supervisor Michael A. Aregano, State Senator Christopher Ryan, Assemblymember Will Barclay and Assemblymember Al Stirpe in support of the project.

The replacement is a first for the state. The new span will be New York’s first gussetless truss bridge and only the second in the nation, a design the Department of Transportation says gives inspectors and maintenance crews far better access to the steel while cutting long term upkeep costs. The new bridge is designed for a 75 year service life and will ride on new concrete piers, abutments and deck. Drivers get eight foot shoulders wide enough for emergency vehicles. Walkers and cyclists get five foot sidewalks on each side, plus decorative street lighting, a real change for a hamlet where Route 11 and Interstate 81 are the only road crossings between the Cicero and Hastings halves of town.

Seven months of one lane traffic

Drivers have been living with the project far longer than boaters. At 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, the Town of Cicero announced, Route 11 traffic shifted onto a temporary one lane bridge beside the old crossing, with a traffic signal alternating the direction of flow. The town told residents to expect slower traffic in the Brewerton area for the remainder of 2026 and posted a contact line at 315-752-1180 for questions.

The temporary crossing is a real piece of engineering in its own right: a 230 foot span with a five foot sidewalk, built to carry both directions of Route 11 traffic one at a time for the roughly 11 month construction period, according to CNY Central’s reporting from opening day. Stoplights on each bank meter the flow, and the Department of Transportation has urged drivers to use alternate routes and be patient at the signal.

For some on the north side, the concern was never retail traffic but response time. “The police depend on me to respond to a collision in a timely manner,” McGill told CNY Central on January 13. “If I can’t even get out of the front yard because of traffic, it’s going to affect the response time.” Laurie Garvin of Magnolias Hair Salon flagged a different exposure that day: “A lot of our clientele come from the Southend,” she said, meaning customers who now sit through the signal to reach her chairs.

Business owners along the corridor braced hard in January. “A lot of other people have forewarned that this is going to be a disaster. Well, guess what, folks? Everyone’s hair is going to be on fire by the time we find out what reality is,” Matt McGill, owner of Matt McGill Collision, told NewsChannel 9 before the closure. Gagnon was more measured: “It’ll be a little inconvenient, no doubt. But we’re going to make the best of it. We won’t be closing because of it. Everybody has to be patient with it.”

Six months in, the reality has landed somewhere between those two forecasts. In a July 21 follow up, a Lakeside Nutrition employee told NewsChannel 9 she sits an extra 20 minutes just to get out of the parking lot at the end of her shift. Liv Flemming, a barista at Lakeside Nutrition, said the winter stretch hurt: “It has definitely, I think, made business slower,” she said, though warmer weather and foot traffic have helped since. Laurie Garvin, who owns Magnolias Hair Salon, reported no damage at all: “It’s not impacting us because we’re an appointment-only business.” And McGill, who predicted disaster in January, told the station the impact on his own shop had been smaller than he expected, with restaurants bearing more of the strain than collision work.

Fireworks night showed the squeeze

The clearest stress test of a one lane bridge in a summer tourist hamlet came over the holiday. On July 1, the New York State Police published a formal traffic plan for Brewerton’s July 3 fireworks, coordinated with the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office, the Cicero Police Department, county fire departments and municipal partners. Starting at 8 p.m. that night, the temporary Route 11 bridge ran northbound only. Pedestrian crossing restrictions took hold at 9:30 p.m., ten minutes before the 9:40 p.m. show. After the finale, troopers closed the temporary bridge to all traffic for 30 to 45 minutes while crowds cleared, with side streets off Route 11 north of Orangeport Road and several Interstate 81 off ramps shut down around the event.

That level of choreography, for one night of fireworks, is a preview of what every big summer weekend looks like when a US highway crossing runs on a single lane. It is also the backdrop against which the July truss removal unfolded four days later.

What boaters and drivers should expect next

With the truss down and staged on the south bank, the work turns to erecting the new gussetless span in the same alignment as the old one. The state’s schedule, laid out in the February 2025 announcement, calls for traffic to move onto the new bridge in fall 2026 and for full project completion in early 2027. The one lane temporary bridge and its signal remain the posted pattern through December 2026, per the Town of Cicero.

On the water, boaters should keep checking Notices to Mariners before running the Brewerton reach. Steel erection over an active channel typically brings more barge positions and short holds, and the Canal Corporation’s July notices show the pattern it will follow: advance notice, marked barges, spotters on both banks, and the full stop, horn, no wake, 5 mph rule inside the work zone. Boaters can register for alerts through the Canal Corporation’s notification program at canals.ny.gov or call the Emergency Call Center at 833-538-1042.

The math on the other side of the project is straightforward. The canal season closes October 14 at 6 p.m. The one lane pattern on Route 11 is posted through December. And if the state hits its dates, the roughly 13,000 drivers who cross the Oneida River at Brewerton each day will ring in 2027 on the first gussetless truss bridge ever built in New York.