Bridge plans take shape

Nov 26th, 2001

By MARK HOLAN
Mobile Register
Staff Reporter

Residents on both sides of Mobile Bay will have chances to see the latest plans for a new Interstate 10 bridge and wider Bayway on Tuesday in Daphne and Dec. 6 in Mobile.

The massive project has been on the drawing boards since 1996, and the start of construction remains at least two years in the future. The bridge is meant to alleviate congestion caused by a kink at the Wallace Tunnels and growing traffic counts.

An environment impact report on the project is due by the end of the year and should be available to the public by February.

But new details are emerging from the Alabama Department of Transportation and Volkert & Associates Inc., the Mobile engineering firm working on the plans.

First, officials have ruled out charging a toll to cross the proposed 190-foot-high bridge over the Mobile River.

"We just felt it would not be feasible for this project," said Ron F. Poiroux, division engineer for the state highway department.

Engineers also appear to have settled on Y-shaped support towers, rather than an H-shaped design, like those on the Cochrane-Africatown USA Bridge.

With the Y-shaped towers in the middle and supporting cables running to the outside of the two bridge decks, some people who have seen the plans suggest the design forms an M-shape, as in Mobile, Poiroux said.

But no final decisions have been made about the shade of concrete or the color of the cables, which are green in artist renderings provided to the Mobile Register.

"Let's be sure to build a masterpiece," Mobile Mayor Mike Dow said. "From what I see, they are moving in that direction. It appears that the bridge is going to be a real landmark for Mobile."

The bridge will cost an estimated $200 million, with 80 percent of the money coming from federal tax coffers.

Traffic would move over the river at the height of a 20-story building on three eastbound and three westbound lanes.

There would be a 15-foot gap between each side of the bridge, which is also the width of the two towers before they fork into the V portion of the Y.

One tower would be located in the Mobile River, the other on city property at the south end of a proposed waterfront development. On Tuesday, the Mobile City Council is expected to consider a $2.1 million contract to build a 1,400-foot-long bulkhead on that city property.
Plans call for developing the land along the western shore of the Mobile River south of Cooper Riverside Park for a Maritime Center of the Gulf of Mexico and a Mobile Bay ferry terminal. The city has secured $9.8 million in federal funds for the projects, with another $4.9 million in the pipeline from Washington, D.C.

"I think the bridge will enhance the visual image of our waterfront," Dow said. "It will certainly enhance the view of our city as they pass over it."

Meanwhile, plans call for doubling the Bayway to eight lanes -- four in each direction -- with 10-foot-wide emergency lanes, or shoulders, on each side of both spans. A regular travel lane is 12 feet wide.

More importantly, Poiroux said, officials have decided to add three emergency crossovers between the two ribbons of concrete over the Bay.

The Bayway expansion is expected to cost $150 million.

Daphne and Spanish Fort leaders said widening the Bayway would be a good thing for the Eastern Shore cities, which are considered bedroom communities of Mobile.

"It's so busy now, that there's no doubt that it needs to be added to," said Spanish Fort Mayor Greg Kuhlmann. "The traffic's only getting worse ... Anything they can do to get us to Mobile faster and safer would be worth it."

Kuhlmann, who has been mayor of the 5,000-population city for just over a year now, said he has not thoroughly studied the Bayway plans but that he plans to attend Tuesday's meeting in Daphne. His main concern is how traffic will be affected during the construction.

"I just want to see what they plan to do, when and how and what it's going to do to the traffic while the construction's going on," Kuhlmann said.

Daphne Councilman John Lake said he favors adding the extra lanes but expressed concern over where the traffic is going to go once it exits Interstate 10.

"They're going to bring in a six-lane road, but what are they going to do with all of that traffic when it gets dumped onto a four-lane road?" Lake said, referring to U.S. 98, where many Daphne, Fairhope and Spanish Fort residents exit off I-10.

Poiroux said federal highway officials plan to widen the interstate to three lanes in each direction in Mobile and Baldwin counties over the coming decade.

He said work will begin next year on the stretch between Rangeline and Carol Plantation roads, due to heavier traffic between Mobile and the Mississippi line than between the Eastern Shore and the Florida line.

When the Wallace Tunnels opened in 1973, between 15,000 and 20,000 vehicles per day moved through what many area residents have come to know as "the hole in the wall," Volkert's Paul Griggs said.

Traffic leveled off at around 40,000 vehicles per day in the mid-1980s. Fifteen years later, some 60,000 cars and trucks pass through the twin tunnels daily, with traffic counts spiking to 80,000 vehicles on busy holiday weekends. That's one-third more than capacity.

As traffic slows at the downward curves on each end of the tunnel, the interstate can become a congested and dangerous parking lot.

"If nothing is done, that's something you'll begin to experience every day," Griggs said.
But some Church Street East and Down the Bay residents near Virginia Street are worried about traffic from both directions exiting the interstate for downtown destinations.

"We think people will use the bridge rather than the (Wallace) tunnel," said Violetta Simpson of the Down the Bay Neighborhood Association.

The Wallace and Bankhead tunnels will remain in use after the bridge is built. Traffic on the interstate would split between the bridge and downtown use near Texas Street.

Simpson said she is concerned about the safety of children attending the Council Traditional School. She would like to see the Virginia Street exit pushed back west toward Brookley Field Industrial Complex.

Dow said he is not worried about the bridge sweeping more traffic past Mobile's waterfront development and other downtown attractions.

"My concern," he said, "is that this federal project not take any of our normal federal allocations."

(Mobile Register Staff Reporter Rena Havner contributed to this report.)