We want to utilize this space this week to give Governor Dan McKee some credit. Not for magically making a new Washington Bridge appear out of the ether two years ahead of schedule, but for finally admitting that he doesn’t know when one will actually be built.

From the beginning of this crisis, it has been maddening to watch McKee and Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti scramble from one hastily conjured sound byte to the next — making estimates, guessing prices, and offering half-promises as truths that were, in reality, just as likely to come to actual fruition as Taylor Swift flying into T.F. Green to march in Bristol’s Fourth of July parade.

While we certainly understand that the weight of public scrutiny must be difficult to deal with when navigating something as high-stakes and crucial as the failure of one of the state’s most important transportation arteries, it doesn’t justify treating the situation like something you can fake until you’ve made it; which only serves to further annoy and belittle the people that you’re somehow simultaneously trying to appease with such short-sighted, transparently futile tactics.

For once, after their bid package sent to over 2,000 firms proved to be too ambitious (and too risky, considering the penalties proposed if construction couldn’t be achieved in the abbreviated time frame conveniently to be completed right before primary time in 2026), both McKee and Alviti have since acknowledged they had probably gone too far with the requirements and expectations for such a bid.

Both men have since downgraded their answers to reporters’ questions about when a bridge might get built from completely made up guesses to a much more appreciated “who knows?” kind of approach. At the very least, it is a good foundation of honesty to start from and build on moving forward towards a real solution.

Now that we’ve established that our leaders have “done everything possible to work towards an abbreviated and rapid solution” to the bridge crisis, perhaps now we can more methodically plan out a bid package that won’t cause 2,000 contractors to laugh out loud in unison, and provide some relief to the thousands of people who commute through that corridor every day.

If it can’t be completed before election season in time for a nice photo op, that’s just part of the price we’ll have to pay.