With less than a month before repairs begin on the bridge, the traffic logistics are still murky and unclear. Public officials have known about this for at least a month, but the public and stakeholders still don’t have all the details.
According to staff emails obtained by WHQR, Wilmington City Manager Tony Caudle planned a meeting with Mike Kozlosky, executive director of the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO), the
regional planning organization for transportation projects, on November 13. Additionally, Deputy City Manager Thom Moton had been in talks with NCDOT division-3 engineer Chad Kimes since mid-November about logistics. But none of their plans were made known to residents until the first publicly posted notice by NCDOT on Friday, December 1.
The contractor for the project, Southern Road & Bridge LLC, was awarded a contract of $7.1 million on November 30 of this year to go ahead with the project, which may have caused the short notice.
At the most recent New Hanover County Commissioners meeting, representatives from the NCDOT failed to show up and answer pressing questions from both staff and residents.
Commissioner Jonathan Barfield criticized the DOT, saying, “they should have made provisions to be here. NCDOT should have made provisions to alert the community a long time prior to this.”
Communications breakdown
After much public criticism over the lack of communications, regional leaders and NCDOT representatives are planning a meeting next week to hammer out final details. But the bridge work is certain to cause traffic congestion and problems throughout the region, impacting the Port, local employers, and residents of downtown Wilmington who will see increased traffic on Street 3rd as more commuters travel to the Isabel Holmes Bridge on the northern end of downtown.
According to emails obtained by WHQR, Abby Lorenzo, Deputy Director of the WMPO, has been reaching out to local large-scale employers like Novant. She wrote in an email to NHRMC Police Chief Doug Monroe that the closures will cause significant congestion and delays throughout the region “especially for those traveling between Brunswick and New Hanover Counties.”
Lorenzo emailed Monroe on Wednesday, December 13 to request a meeting to discuss WMPO’s Go Coast program and how to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips during the construction.
In response, Monroe asked if there was a reason traffic flow was only one way during each closure. Lorenzo forwarded a response from Kimes where he explained the rationale.
“Our first preference was to keep one lane open in each direction. However, once we started analyzing this option, we could not switch the traffic over in the other lane safely. Our calculations showed vehicles such as tractor trailers would have regular mirror slaps and possibility of side swaps [sic] in these transitions. It also would have reduced our width for safety for the workers working on the bridge," Kimes wrote.
Port traffic
Following the official announcement from NCDOT, the North Carolina State Ports Authority made a request to the City of Wilmington, that tractor-trailers be allowed to use 3rd Street, which is currently banned. City staff were not certain until Wednesday, who had the jurisdiction to approve or deny the request. But those staffers have since told concerned neighbors that port traffic will, indeed, be rerouted around downtown via Shipyard Boulevard and College Road.
According to staff emails, NCDOT had provided routing options to the city, including a route along 3rd Street, but ultimately the city decided to avoid sending additional heavy truck traffic down 3rd, citing pedestrian safety concerns and congestion. The route will take those trucks 20 minutes rather than 11 minutes for the shorter 3rd Street route, without traffic congestion considerations.
A spokesperson for the city hopes to have a communication packet with proposed detours out by Wednesday, December 20 — a day after stakeholders will meet to discuss the project. WMPO Director Mike Kozlosky said in a December 11 email that public servants will have a “major media day once everything is finalized and prior to Contractor plans to go to work.”
Repairs on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge are slated to begin January 3, 2024 — just two weeks later.
An aging, heavily trafficked bridge
County-to-county commuter flow data from the US Census Bureau shows that from 2016-2020 on average, daily, 32,446 people commuted to work from all over North Carolina to New Hanover County.
On top of daily commutes, NCDOT reports 70,000 vehicles cross the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge daily, but it’s anticipated almost 82,000 vehicles will travel over the bridge daily by 2045. UNCW Economist Mouhcine Geuttabi says almost 50% of New Hanover County’s workforce commutes in from outside the county. That means the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge is a major artery in the lifeblood of the local economy.
The bridge is 54 years old and at its end-of-life expectancy, necessitating repairs on a more and more frequent basis.
The Wilmington Urban Metropolitan Planning Organization approved a resolution in February of 2022 to seek out all possible funding opportunities. Replacing the bridge is the top unfunded priority of the WMPO.
Plans for another new bridge, in addition to a replacement for the Cape Fear Memorial, have started and stalled several times — currently, there's no movement on such a project.
