Wilmington council members Cassidy Santaguida and David Joyner on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement

By Benjamin Schachtman

Published September 11, 2026 at 12:02 PM EDT

Slowly but surely, plans have been moving forward to replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge with a new, tolled bridge. As that plan becomes much closer to a reality, the unpopular toll isn't the only concern. On today's show, two Wilmington city council members share their thoughts on the process, and how things might proceed differently.

This story — some would say saga — dates back years, even decades.

Back in the early nineties, NCDOT first started thinking about a new tolled bridge, called the southern bridge, the Cape Fear Crossing, or the Cape Fear Skyway. Whatever you called it, it would have crossed the river and landed near the end of Independence Boulevard.

That project is currently on the back burner, to say the least, but it’s still technically on the books for the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, or the WMPO, which is the regional planning authority that includes elected officials from Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender counties, as well as Navassa, Belville, Leland, Wilmington, and the three beach towns — Wrightsville, Kure, and Carolina — and a representative from NCDOT.

A more urgent issue, dating back five or six years, is replacing the existing Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, which NCDOT considers functionally obsolete — that doesn’t mean it’s falling into the river, but it does mean it can no longer handle the ever-increasing traffic flow in and out of Wilmington.

The problem? NCDOT doesn’t have the money to fund it. The cost has swollen significantly, more than doubling from estimates around $400 million five years ago to over a billion dollars today. But with inflation, rising material costs, and a better sense of how much land the state will need to acquire - that is, take through eminent domain — the cost has far outstripped NCDOT’s ability to fund it. There’s plenty of conversation to be had about NCDOT’s broken funding mechanism, including the gas tax’s inability to keep up with transportation costs and increased fuel efficiency, but the bottom line is Wilmington needs a new bridge that no one can afford.

That’s despite a $242-million grant from the bipartisan infrastructure law. Once projected to cover half the cost, it now covers less than a quarter — but it’s still an important funding source. But unless the replacement project is set to go by September of next year, the grant will expire — and officials say an extension is unlikely.

The solution, for years, was to consider a toll, which WMPO has authorized as an option. Local officials were told to trust the process, because a toll made the project more feasible, and score better in NCDOT’s ranking system. Eventually, the dream was that the project would bring in enough other funding that a toll ultimately wouldn’t be necessary. But over the last year or so, we've watched that dream slowly die.

WMPO and other local officials have suggested an alternative: a sales tax for the tri-county area that would specifically fund transportation projects, including a toll-free replacement for the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. That would take a lot of steps, including approval from the state to set up a local tax authority, and the passage of a ballot measure, where voters approve the tax.

But even a fully funded bridge poses concerns, and last week, the City of Wilmington passed a resolution identifying some of them.

A key issue is NCDOT’s two current designs — given the snazzy names of Alternative A and Alternative B. They’re both roughly a billion dollars, with six lanes instead of the CFMB's current four, as well as a bike and pedestrian path. They both also have a clearance height of 135 feet – but Alternative A is a lift bridge, with a smaller footprint, that officials feel will do less damage in a lot of different ways. Alternative B is taller overall, and longer, and has a bigger footprint – and would also drop bridge traffic on South 5th Avenue, which isn’t really designed for that right now.

The city also wants a more direct seat at the table in the merger team — a host of federal and state organizations that work with NCDOT and WMPO to design the bridge.

And, the city wants to try and think outside the box — at least outside the box of the two current options. They’re currently exploring how else a near bridge might be configured.

That might include asking questions about why the bridge actually needs to be 135 feet tall, based on parameters established by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard roughly three decades ago.

In a lot of ways, all of this is coming to a head as NCDOT prepares to hold two public hearings. The first is on Monday, September 14, at CFCC's Daniels Hall; the second is on Tuesday, September 15, at the Leland Cultural Arts Center. These may well be the last chance to weigh in, in person, although comments can be submitted by phone or email through October 15.

That’s a month, not a lot of time to change course.

And, there's one more wrinkle:

There’s new language in the state budget that essentially puts regional transportation organizations — like WMPO — on the hook for preliminary costs of a project if they unilaterally cancel it or change the funding mechanism.

The provision was included by Republican lawmakers to pressure Charlotte and surrounding towns to accept tolls on Interstate 77. Under the updated statute, they’d be on the hook for almost $70 million dollars in costs for planning, engineering, and studies. And, if that wasn’t repaid, NCDOT would withhold support for future projects.

The question is, would that same law apply if the WMPO withdrew its support for the Cape Fear replacement as a tolled bridge?

I want to be clear here: I haven’t heard from any local officials, in Wilmington or other governments represented by the WMPO, that they plan to derail the bridge project.

The law only applies if the decision to cancel a project or, in this case, rescind support for tolling, is unilateral — meaning done without NCDOT’s involvement. The law would not apply if NCDOT and the Merger Team came to a new agreement, for example, to use a regional sales tax, or to pursue some other option.

But, hypothetically, if WMPO did vote to rescind its support for a toll, it seems like NCDOT would be legally owed for planning costs, which, as I understand it, top $30 million dollars at least. And, that money would be owed, not by WMPO, but by the counties and municipalities whose representatives on the planning organization voted to kill the toll. So, if Wilmington’s two representatives voted no on a toll, that’s two out 13, or about 15% of the amount repaid to NCDOT — probably at least around $5 million.

(What happens if the two members voted differently? I have no idea.)

But, in any case, you get why this would be a concern.

WMPO has actually asked NCDOT if the law would apply to them twice, but as of last week, hadn’t received a clear answer. Some sources at NCDOT have told me, off the record, they believe it would. I reached out to NCDOT officially, but haven’t gotten an answer yet — so I’ll update this if I do.

Wilmington council members Cassidy Santaguida and David Joyner on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement

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