Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
“The Bay Bridge is safe until 2065.” That’s the best news Milt Chaffee, executive director of Maryland Transportation Authority, found in a brand-new study of how long we can count on the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge to connect Maryland’s Western and Eastern shores.
There are, of course, conditions.
Dependability in “fair or better condition through 2065” will take “programmed and anticipated rehabilitation and maintenance” costing some $2.68 billion, engineering consultants RK&K and Ammann & Whitney report in the Life Cycle Cost Analysis.
By then, the older bridge, the eastbound structure, will be 113 years old and the westbound structure 92.
Beyond then, keeping those old bridges in fair or better condition is a losing proposition. The consultants foresee “major rehabilitation likely to have a major, detrimental impact on available bridge capacity and operations.”
Without additional capacity, familiar backups are going to get worse. Way worse.
Try to take a summer trip to the ocean in 2040 and you’ll endure “significant queues” no matter what day you travel. Significant means up to 13 miles eastbound every day of the week. Westbound traffic will fare better — with daily backups up to only three miles — except on Sunday. Sunday queues may be 14 miles long.
Even after beach season ends, Friday evening and Saturday afternoon travelers can anticipate “eastbound queues of up to a mile.”
How’s that for a rosy future?
To cut the queues, it’s going to cost us. With a goal of eight lanes of bridge roadway, we’re going to have to spend real money and put up with major construction inconvenience.
“There will be road construction involving short-term pain that may be as bad as the long-term inconvenience,” Chaffee told Bay Weekly.
The fork in this road gives us four choices ahead, the study reports.
Option 1: Build a third bridge, keeping up the two we’ve got and widening the US 50/301 approaches by one lane, at a cost of roughly $5 billion (in 2014 dollars).
Option 2: Tear down the older, eastbound bridge and replace it with a new five-lane bridge while widening the highway approaches by one lane. Cost is $5.45 billion if we act sooner, rising to $5.71 billion in 2060.
Option 3: Tear down both bridges, replacing them with a new eight-lane structure, whether one bridge or two. Highway approaches are again increased by one lane. Cost is projected at $5.94 billion if we start now, rising to $6.85 billion if we wait until 2060.
Option 4: Keep both bridges, widening and rehabilitating the eastbound bridge to three lanes; maintain the highway approaches. Cost is only $3.89 billion — but this option closes at 2040.
Which fork will we take? Predicting which will take a crystal ball.