PROVIDENCE — The state Department of Transportation’s Route 195 relocation project is nearing some milestones — opening part of the highway itself to traffic, and reopening easy access to the city’s India Point Park.

Frank Corrao III, the agency’s deputy chief engineer, said that the first element of the project to be complete — the ramps carrying northbound traffic on Route 95 to the eastbound lanes of the new section of Route 195 — will open following a ribbon-cutting by the end of October.

“It’s right on schedule,” he said.

The other development will make itself known Sunday night, when the DOT starts interrupting traffic on Route 195 to install the beams for the new pedestrian bridge that will cross over the highway, reconnecting the city’s East Side with the middle of the park. That part of the project has been set back about 45 days, Corrao said, while the DOT arranged to avoid cutting down an oak tree on the north side of the highway, near the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School.

Overall, Corrao said, the $577-million project is 40- to 50-percent complete, depending on how you look at it. The rest of its bridges, ramps and sections of highway are scheduled to be complete and open to traffic by the end of 2010. However, there will be about two more years of construction (and destruction) after that, to remove the existing highway, bridges and embankments, and to rebuild local city streets.

The project involves moving Route 195’s interchange with Route 95, and a section of Route 195 east of the interchange, to the south. The highway now crosses the Providence River north of the Point Street Bridge and the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier. The new light-blue-green arch bridge that will carry the new Route 195 across the river is farther from downtown, just south of the hurricane barrier.

The first section of the new highway to open will be the ramps carrying northbound traffic from Route 95 to the new bridge and then to the new section of highway headed east.

Corrao said that the existing exit ramp from Route 95 north will remain open, too, maintaining access to downtown for northbound traffic. That will complicate things a bit, he noted: Drivers headed for downtown will have to remember to take the old exit because the new section of highway will meet Route 195 beyond the exit, missing downtown.

Beyond letting drivers take advantage of the new highway, opening that first part of the project soon will remove some of the northbound traffic from the section of Route 95 immediately to the north, taking pressure off it while the DOT is rebuilding it.

On the Route 95 end, the new exit ramp from Route 95 northbound that is to open by November is nearly complete, sweeping off to the east, over Allens Avenue and past the big tanks, to the new arch bridge.

The best view of the other end of the project, east of the new arch bridge on the East Side, is from George M. Cohan Boulevard, which runs above Route 195 on the city’s East Side.

Yesterday, that end of the project was crowded with cranes and trucks, and a crew was laying blacktop on a section of the new highway close to the existing highway. Corrao’s oak tree is close by, apparently healthy following the root surgery that is supposed to allow the pedestrian bridge to be built without killing it.

The former pedestrian bridge, next to the Gregorian School, was utilitarian enough to suggest a correctional facility, but it connected the East Side conveniently to the middle of the park. When it was dismantled in September 2005, it was missed, and although the park has been accessible, sort of, from one end or the other during the construction since, the DOT has been under pressure to restore the bridge.

The agency had promised to open the new, wider and much more elaborate, pedestrian bridge by the end of September, but Corrao said the need for tree work caused a delay. He said, however, that the DOT will open part of the pedestrian bridge while work continues on the rest.

On Sunday night, the DOT will start installing the concrete box beams that will support the pedestrian bridge. Transportation Director Jerome F. Williams said that, with no good alternative routes for 195 traffic, the DOT will close the westbound side of the highway at 11 p.m. and shift the westbound traffic to share 1,000 feet of the eastbound lanes with the eastbound traffic. The road will be reopened by 5:30 a.m., the DOT said.

Weather permitting, there will be two nights’ work on the westbound side, on Aug. 26 and 27, followed by two nights’ on the eastbound side and another night’s worth on Aug. 30. Five more weeks of construction will begin Sept. 9, the DOT said.

blandis@projo.com