Favored Bridge Plan Selected; Fixed Span 80 Feet High

CREST HAVEN – Buying a bridge is a lot like buying a car. First comes the decision: It’s time. Next comes the search. Once a suitable model is found there’s a glance at the price tag. Then comes the tough part, getting financing.
Freeholders, like those scanning a car dealer’s lot for a new vehicle, went through that preliminary exercise Feb. 12. Joseph Romano of Michael Baker International explained alternatives to replace the circa-1939 Middle Thorofare Bridge and two associated spans on Ocean Drive in Lower Township.  Romano underscored that all are safe. Width-wise they were not made for present vehicles or standards.
Mill Creek and Upper Thorofare bridges are also prone to be useless in a 100-year flood. A new roadway would be higher, and able to remain above those projected flood levels.
After listening to the alternatives’ good and bad points, Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton said he favored Alternative 3. His peers agreed that seemed the best way to proceed. While there remains much to achieve before moving ahead, the proposed price would be $242 million.
Among its virtues, the fixed design has an 80-foot vertical height, sufficient for present and future commercial fishing vessels to clear. It would have an 80-foot horizontal clearance for vessels compared to the present one of 45 feet.
Among its other selling points, the alternative would mean realigning the bridge to the south, as well as realigning Mill Creek and Upper Thorofare bridges on Ocean Drive to the north.
Gone would be those bridge openings, and the span would offer better crossings for bicyclists and pedestrians.
It would have no yearly maintenance or operating costs and would have the lowest life-cycle cost.
Countering the positives would be expected environmental impacts, acquisitions of nine commercial and two residential partial property acquisitions, and a detour for construction.
The aging span is a motorist’s nightmare in summer. That’s when the bridge must open to allow vessels to pass. Traffic can back up for miles in both directions.
It’s no different for those at the helm of vessels, especially large commercial fishing boats, which have to gauge the right approach to navigate through the bridge. Many of those vessels have been pushed by wind or current into the bridge.
Then, too, in summer as temperatures rise, the bascule (a kind of drawbridge counterweighted so that it can be raised and lowered easily) leaf of the bridge has a tendency to get stuck or cannot close.
With all that in mind, freeholders’ next task will be to scour the sources of funding for grants to build the bridges.
The path of the bridge would, from the Cape May side, basically head toward the ocean from Ocean Drive skirting the Bumble Bee processing plant over Upper Thorofare and Middle Thorofare curving onto Ocean Drive on Five Mile Island.
Because of Fish and Wildlife environmental concerns at the former Coast Guard Electronics Station, it would stay away from the property.
More stakeholder meetings are planned in the next two months.
Armed with a freeholder resolution of support, which Romano sought and was assured by Thornton of getting, the project can advance to a design stage as the hunt for financing continues.