Concord Road Bridge over Route 3
The bridge was built in 1953 for the relocated U.S. Route 3, which the state laid out through Billerica in 1952 and 1953 as a four-lane divided highway with limited access, running from Route 128 in Burlington to the Lowell bypass in Chelmsford and bypassing the town centers. Concord Road, the old road from Billerica Center toward Concord, was carried over the new highway on a simple steel stringer bridge, and the state rebuilt the road and the water main at the overpass. In 1953 the town was asked for $21,750 "for the purpose of reimbursing the State for the Town's share of expense in construction of roadways and watermains at the overpasses on Concord Road, Rangeway Road and Treble Cove Road." In 1962-1963 Town Meeting voted, 111 in favor on a rising vote, to build a sidewalk on Concord Road from Whiting Street "southerly to sidewalk on Route 3 Bridge below Middlesex Turnpike."
In the Route 3 North project, the state's first design-build highway contract, Modern Continental Construction widened Route 3 to three lanes each way between Route 128 and the New Hampshire line and replaced 40 bridges; the work was finished early in 2005. The present Concord Road bridge, of continuous steel beams about 300 feet long, was built in 2004. The state bridge inventory names it for Gordon C. Brainerd, a Billerica selectman who in 1987 predicted that Route 3 would be widened "within six or seven years."