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On Thursday night, crews began work on what is expected to be the region’s most disruptive traffic project in decades: preserving the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.
One-lane east and westbound nightly closures of the aging bridge start at 7 p.m. and will last through late January. The real work begins on the 28th, a human experiment on stress and patience for an unwilling population of tens of thousands of people as the state Department of Transportation closes all inbound traffic on the bridge to Wilmington for nine weeks. After a brief pause for the Azalea Festival between March 31 and April 8, the state will close outbound traffic for the next six weeks, with the goal of finishing by Memorial Day.
More than 65,000 vehicles cross that bridge daily. And while there is another less-traveled bridge 1.5 miles north, the closures are sure to upend life for commuters. County officials are bracing for it like they would for a hurricane — even staging a multi-agency emergency management post on the ninth floor of the Skyline Center, with a view of the headache below.
For many, the traffic quagmire has picked at wounds about how to get the old bridge replaced–and who’s going to pay for it. No agency has committed to fully funding it, even though officials identify it as the area’s top transportation priority.
In discussions about the lack of funding, some leaders have invoked the idea that it shows the area lacks political firepower, or that Raleigh overlooks the region. Perhaps both.
Communities east of I-95, the belief goes, get ignored.
For years, the slow decay of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge has embodied that feeling. It has been in poor condition since Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo was appointed to office in 2006.
“Even then, it was reaching its limits,” Saffo said.
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For The Assembly, Benjamin Schachtman and Johanna F. Still explore whether political clout still matters in getting major transportation projects funded.
Time For Some Traffic Problems in Wilmington
A traffic nightmare arrives on the eve of a consequential infrastructure vote. And that decision has leaders questioning the strength of Wilmington’s political sway.
Benjamin Schachtman: Johanna Still, thanks for being here.
Johanna Still: Thanks.
BS: Okay. So this week, we talked about the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. I don't know how anyone could have missed this, but just in case: what's going on with the bridge right now, that is going to snarl traffic for months.
JS: So what's already started are overnight closures. But the big event is later this month on the 28th, when inbound traffic to Wilmington on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge is going to be closed. So you cannot cross the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge come the 28th to enter Wilmington. And that is a huge deal. About 70,000 vehicles cross that bridge every single day. Is it going to be a nightmare? Yes. The extent to which it's going to be a nightmare, we still don't know. Right? So is it going to be a 30-minute delay, an hour, who knows. We do know that it's going to be a mess. And part of the difficulty with this situation is the fact that, you know, this is a preservation project, it’s going to buy some time. But the real issue is that we don't have money to replace the bridge, the bridge needs to be replaced. It's old, the middle section which moves, which is the reason for these closures that are coming up, that's an outdated style. Newer bridges, they don't have that, they just kind of go – if you think about the new bridge in Surf City, or maybe how Snow’s Cut over Carolina Beach looks. That's the kind of bridge that state transportation officials say that we need in Wilmington for the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement – and building that cost a ton of money. And the state says they don't have the money to pay for it. And that leads us to the issue that we talked about this week.
BS: Right the situation right now is that by the end of the month, the WMPO, the Wilmington Urban Metropolitan Planning Organization, made up of local leaders, will have to vote on whether or not to consider an option for a toll bridge. Now that doesn't mean that we're going forward with the toll bridge. But one of the opinions on this is that if we don't even consider the toll option that we will lose out on federal money from the Infrastructure Act passed two years ago by President Joe Biden and Congress. And that to be taken seriously by both the federal and state government, we need to at least look at a toll option. The argument that people like Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo and County Commissioner Jonathan Barfield have made is that this is a line in the sand, and we need to absolutely reject the toll option, and maybe put more political pressure on Raleigh, specifically on Cooper's office, on the North Carolina Department of Transportation – which led it to the question of whether or not local officials actually have the political juice to do that.
JS: Right. That's the tension here. Because the way that things used to be done prior to 2013, the way that transportation projects were funded, there's this sentiment that political pressure did matter. And that, you know, this concept of pet projects could be funded. There's also a sentiment in the previous version, that money was spread around a little bit more evenly between rural and urban areas. And so there's an argument for whether that's fair, I guess, right? So you have more people in an urban area, more taxpayers, maybe they need more dollars, as opposed to being spread out evenly. So there was reform in 2013, that changed how those dollars get allocated. And this is a super complicated process. Even the people who work within the process have a hard time understanding it. And so the new version is supposed to be data driven. And so what we've got for the faction that is not in favor of a toll is they feel like even despite all of the changes, despite the fact that this is supposed to be super objective, they feel that political influence still matters. So that's what we took a look at.
BS: Yeah, it's a really deep dive. You and I both spoke to a lot of people, folks like Saffo and Barfield, who seemed to think politics is still very much a part of this. And folks like State Senator Michael Lee and Brunswick County Commissioner Frank Williams, who seemed to think that, no, it’s not really a political game anymore. So worth checking out. But for now, Johanna Still thanks for being here.
JS: Thank you
