By Donald Wittkowski
As the closure of the Townsends Inlet Bridge stretches into its second week, residents and business leaders on the Sea Isle City side are frustrated about having to endure yet another lengthy shutdown of the nearly 80-year-old span.
During a City Council meeting Tuesday, they urged Sea Isle officials to lobby for construction of an entirely new span to replace what one resident called “that stupid thing.”
“At some point, it needs to be replaced,” Christopher Glancey, president of the Sea Isle City Chamber of Commerce and Revitalization, told the Council members.
Glancey and others called on Council to pass a resolution demanding that the Cape May County Bridge Commission build a new span linking Sea Isle with Avalon along the Ocean Drive seashore route.
“Why don’t we just bite the bullet and figure out a way to replace the thing?” said John Henry, a Sea Isle resident for 12 years.
Henry began his remarks to Council by asserting that it was time “to tear that stupid thing down.”
“It’s an antiquated bridge. It’s an aging bridge,” he said.
Council President William Kehner said he has been told by the Cape May County engineer that even if a new bridge was built, it would take about 10 years to complete the project, so there is no immediate relief in sight.
Built in 1940, the bridge has a history of lengthy closures. After Hurricane Sandy pummeled the Jersey Shore in 2012, the bridge was shut down for months while the storm-damaged road on the Avalon side was rebuilt. Another repair project dragged on through 2015 before the bridge was reopened in mid-June.
In the latest closing, the bridge was shut down on April 3 for emergency structural repairs after cracks and severe deterioration were found in the support piles during an underwater inspection.
New piles must be installed to reinforce the span before it is reopened to traffic, Cape May County Engineer Dale Foster said.
Foster said the plan is to complete the repairs well before the Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the peak summer tourism season at the Jersey Shore.
Sea Isle Business Administrator George Savastano said the county has hired a construction contractor and repairs will begin this week. He stressed that the goal is to complete the work “as quickly as possible.”
In the meantime, motorists who normally use the bridge will have to detour miles out of their way to the Garden State Parkway or Route 9 to travel between Sea Isle and Avalon.
“While we understand the inconvenience this causes to many people, we appreciate that the county is placing safety above all else,” Sea Isle City said in a statement posted on its website.
Damage was discovered during an underwater inspection that was part of a normal two-year checkup cycle for the bridge. Divers discovered a crack and some movement in one support pile about 20 feet underwater. They also found severe deterioration in a three-pile cluster that supports one of the piers on the Avalon side of the bridge, the county said.
The piles are part of piers that make up the bridge’s support system. They were installed in 1962 to provide additional support for the bridge after a huge coastal storm that year caused the bottom of the inlet to drop, the county said.
The damage discovered April 3 prompted the county to immediately shut down the bridge. The county said in a statement that it feared the bridge’s “unstable condition” would not be strong enough to support the loads.
“Whether it would be close to collapsing, I don’t know,” Foster said in an interview.
Funding for the emergency repair work will come from money that had previously been approved for a series of upgrades on county-owned spans, including maintenance work on the Townsends Inlet Bridge that had been scheduled for the winter of 2017-2018.
The Townsend’s Inlet Bridge is part of a network of toll bridges along the Ocean Drive operated by the Cape May County Bridge Commission. The commission has proposed a toll increase ranging from 50 cents to $1, mainly to finance the installation of the electronic E-ZPass fare collection system on all five of its spans.
In addition to funding the installation of E-ZPass, the toll increase would provide revenue to help balance the bridge commission’s budget, establish a bridge maintenance plan and build long-term capital improvements.
The commission had originally planned to start the toll increase and have E-ZPass ready on June 1, but now says it will take another four or five months before it completes the project and raises fares. The toll is currently $1.50 on the five Ocean Drive bridges.
