Ocean City mayor wants new span
After the experience of going through this week's nor'easter with just one bridge to the mainland, Ocean Mayor Rick Meehan said he's going to ask the State Highway Administration to add a second span to the Route 90 bridge (above).
The current bridge, which feeds into the barrier island at 60th Street, has been shut down last month for emergency repairs (below) to an eroded girder.
Adding a new two-lane bridge to supplement the existing span would be a very expensive project, and given the woes of the state transportation budget, the mayor may have a long wait ahead.
SHA spokesman Dave Buck said there are no plans in the works to add capacity to the Route 90 bridge, which at about 35 years old is a relative youngster in infrastructure terms. Buck noted that Worcester County already has some other big-ticket items higher on its priority list, including the rehabilitation or replacement of the U.S. 50 bridge, which is 66 years old and showing its age. If replacement is the option selected, that could be a $500 million project, he said.
State Highway Administration photo
Comments
We're going to need more than a new span. The whole area is just prime for a major disaster. If we ever had a major hurricane strike, or even a nor'easter of a bigger scale than this past week, we'd be talking Katrina scale devastation or worse, from Ocean City all the way up the Delaware coast through Wilmington.
Speaking of Wilmington and Katrina scale disasters--many parts of the city and surrounding area are vulnerable due to the pre-civil war era tide-gates and dykes in the Wilmington to Port Penn range of the river. Much of these areas are actually drained by dykes, and are already below sea level. Wilmington's combined sewer system, the port of wilmington, and other areas could be vulnerable with enermous economic impacts.
The Ninth Ward of Wilmington, somewhat ironically, is also at tremendous risk of substantial flooding.
I've never dealt with these issues in Maryland/Baltimore, and I do know that Maryland's coastal preparedness and shoreline protection is far superior to that of Delaware's, but as we saw with the flooding of Baltimore a few years back, these are major issues that are only going to get worse with time.
Back to the span--we need as many evacuation routes as possible from the beaches. Rt. 26 and 54 are small roads. 50 and 90 and DE 1 are the only major routes out of the DE/MD beaches.
Posted by: Jed | November 16, 2009 8:30 PM
I don't care as much about the new span as I do about the immeadiate fix. We must pump the back bay dredge material back onto the beach. No more harvesting sand offshore to pump onto the beach and be deposited in the back bay after the next storm. I don't care if the color of the sand isn't pearl white, it beats the death spiral that the current ocean pumping is causing. This must start now. We can't wait until summer, heck we are one more noreaster away from a meltdown, just look at the 10' dropoff to the shoreline as we are halfway through the protective artificial dune now and the back bay is just about impassible in spots at 30th st, a new beach at about 75th st (except the new beach is about one mile out into the back bay). Before the Mayor stares at his rt 90 bridge he needs to take a hard look at what's around and how we got to here and now to reverse this course now
Posted by: baltomoreon | November 17, 2009 7:59 PM
Keep bridges in good repair. Make sure bridges stay in good repair. It's a really important thing. Far more important than building new bridges. I would fully support a 5 year moratorium on new road building until we get our current infrastructure into a state of good repair. What's the point of building a new bridge if we're letting our current ones get old and untrustworthy?
Posted by: Fritz | November 23, 2009 10:01 AM