Drivers making overnight trips across the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge this week can expect some minor delays. The North Carolina Department of Transportation is training a new bridge operator, and part of that 80-hour training is lifting and dropping the bridge every 30 minutes.
The training is this week from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M., every night through Saturday. NCDOT Communications Officer Lauren Haviland says they chose these hours to minimize traffic delays.
“We hate to inconvenience people, but the less amount of people that we have to inconvenience the better. Obviously I think everyone can agree that we want this new operator to have the best possible training… so we're trying to provide that, and it should not lengthen their commute time.”
Haviland says the training should create little impact on traffic. NCDOT has notified all emergency officials in the surrounding counties, so that the lifting and dropping of the bridge can be cancelled by those officials, if necessary.
