By Donald Wittkowski
Motorists who regularly use the nearly 80-year-old Townsends Inlet Bridge to travel between Sea Isle City and Avalon are, no doubt, familiar with its history of lane restrictions and shutdowns for maintenance or structural repairs.
They should prepare for another lengthy bridge closure starting this fall.
Beginning Sept. 18, the bridge will be closed until May 22, 2019, for an $8.6 million overhaul. It is scheduled to reopen just before Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the bustling summer tourism season at the Jersey Shore.
The project will replace seven old deteriorated steel spans on the bridge’s Avalon side with four larger ones made of concrete, Cape May County Engineer Dale Foster said.
“They’re in pretty bad shape,” Foster said of the seven steel spans during an interview Thursday.
Foster gave an update on the project during the monthly board meeting of the Cape May County Bridge Commission. The commission operates the Townsends Inlet Bridge as well as four other bridges that connect the Cape May County seashore towns along the scenic Ocean Drive coastal route.
At their board meeting, the commission members adopted a resolution giving their approval to the county’s $8.6 million construction contract for the Townsends Inlet Bridge project. Agate Construction Co. Inc. of Clermont won the contract by submitting the lowest bid. Foster noted that Agate’s bid was far lower than the county’s $14 million estimate for the project.
The seven new spans are intended to wring more use out of an antiquated bridge that has had a string of closings in recent years for structural, maintenance or road-related work. In 2017, it was shut down from April to late June for emergency repairs after structural cracks and deterioration were discovered during an underwater inspection.
Drivers had to squeeze through one narrow lane of alternating traffic between November 2017 and this past May for a $2.7 million maintenance project that included replacing rusty old steel railings running along both sides of the bridge.
When the bridge is closed, motorists are forced to make circuitous trips on Route 9 or the Garden State Parkway to travel between Sea Isle and Avalon instead of having a quick, direct hop over the Townsends Inlet Bridge. Local businesses have repeatedly complained that the bridge closures have deprived them of their flow of customers.
In the meantime, discussions continue on long-range plans to replace the bridge, which was built in 1939 during former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Currently, there is no money available to pay the estimated $105 million to $175 million cost for a new bridge.
Sea Isle and county officials have estimated it would take between three and 10 years for the planning, permitting and construction of a new bridge once the funding is found.
“We are still looking at a total replacement of the bridge,” Foster said.
The seven new spans that will be installed starting in September will survive, even if the bridge is eventually replaced. Foster said the spans would be converted into a public fishing pier that would be adjacent to the new bridge.
More immediately, the new spans will help make the bridge safer for traffic. The project will replace what Foster described as the “worst part of the bridge.”
“It gives us a lot more comfort,” he said of the bridge’s overhaul. “The rest of the bridge will be in pretty good shape.”
One of the benefits of the new project will be a wider – and safer – sidewalk for people who fish off the bridge on the Avalon side, Foster explained. The sidewalk is just two feet wide now, but will expand to six feet wide once the new spans are in place.
In another improvement, the Cape May County Bridge Commission completed the installation of the E-ZPass toll system on the Townsends Inlet Bridge and its four other bridges this past spring to give motorists the option of paying their fares electronically instead of having to fumble for cash or coins.
