The Townsends Inlet Bridge connects Sea Isle City and Avalon.
Could this be the beginning of the end for the Townsends Inlet and Corsons Inlet bridges, two antiquated spans in Cape May County dating to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration?
The Cape May County Board of Commissioners agreed Tuesday to seek competitive proposals from professional engineering firms for a “Local Concept Development Study” to replace both bridges at some point.
Kevin Lare, county administrator, said it will likely take 18 months per phase to complete the study after an engineering firm is hired by the county to do the work. He indicated it is an early step in the county’s ultimate goal to replace the Townsends Inlet and Corsons Inlet bridges with modern spans.
Lare also serves as executive director of the Cape May County Bridge Commission, the public agency that oversees five toll bridges that connect the Cape May County shore communities from Ocean City to Cape May along the scenic Ocean Drive. The Townsends Inlet and Corsons Inlet bridges are two of those spans.
The bridge commission received a nearly $2 million grant, with the assistance of Congressman Jeff Van Drew’s office, from the federal government’s massive $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill to help pay for the bridge replacement study for Townsends Inlet and Corsons Inlet, Lare said.
There are also plans to use the federal grant to study the replacement of the Great Channel and Grassy Sound bridges in Cape May County. In about six months, the county will seek proposals for a Local Concept Development Study for Great Channel and Grassy Sound, according to Lare.
“Preliminary estimates are that the grant will cover approximately 60 percent of the professional fees with the balance being paid by the County,” Lare said in an email Friday.
The concept study represents another preliminary step in what has been a multiyear process of planning and discussion to build a new bridge to connect Sea Isle City and Avalon over Townsends Inlet and a new bridge linking Strathmere and the south end of Ocean City over Corsons Inlet.
The old-fashioned drawbridges were originally built in the 1930s and 1940s with federal funds as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal infrastructure projects to create jobs during the Great Depression.
The aging Townsends Inlet Bridge has been closed at times for maintenance work and repairs.Both bridges have been showing their age, particularly the Townsends Inlet structure. It has gone through a series of shutdowns in recent years for structural repairs, maintenance work and related road construction. It underwent an $8.6 million reconstruction that forced it to close for 10 months in 2018 and 2019 while seven deteriorated spans on the Avalon side were replaced.
The construction of a new Townsends Inlet Bridge is estimated to cost between $65.7 million and $167.7 million and would take years to complete, according to a county transportation report released in 2020.
The county does not have the money to replace the bridge, but hopes to eventually secure state and federal funding to build a new one. Cost estimates range so widely because there are different alignments that a new bridge could follow when it is built over Townsends Inlet.
Some proposed alignments would take the bridge closer to the ocean or bay, while others would follow the same path as the existing span. Each option would come with different costs and different regulatory requirements because of their various environmental impacts.
Under a projected timeline, preliminary work such as completing the designs, engineering and obtaining the regulatory permits for a new bridge might take as long as six years. Construction could add another three years, according to the county’s 2020 report.
Meanwhile, the estimated cost to replace the Corsons Inlet Bridge ranges from $70.7 million to $105.7 million, the county study says. The replacement bridge would likely be constructed along a different alignment, which would allow vehicular traffic to continue using the existing bridge during work on the new span, according to the study.
Due to the “unpredictable navigation” within Corsons Inlet, marine traffic is predominantly smaller boats that would not be significantly affected by the bridge replacement, the study says.
The Corsons Inlet Bridge links Strathmere with the southern tip of Ocean City.
