SNOW HILL– County officials this week agreed to send a letter of support for replacement of the Bay Bridge.
The Worcester County Commissioners on Tuesday voted 5-2 to grant a request from Queen Anne’s County to issue a letter of support for replacement of the Bay Bridge in its current location.
“We need the entire shore and state to support this so there’s no way they can say no we’re not going to do this,” said Queen Anne’s County Commissioner Jim Moran.
Moran, Queen Anne’s County Administrator Todd Mohn and lobbyist Bruce Bereano met with the commissioners this week to ask for a letter of support in efforts to get the Bay Bridge replaced with an eight-lane span. Moran said the current bridges were built in 1952 and 1973. In the years since, highways all over the state have been expanded but the spans over the bay have not. Moran said officials were grateful that Gov. Larry Hogan had started the study process associated with replacement but that the project was still a ways from completion. The next step in the process is a phase two NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) study. After that four-year study, engineering and construction could begin.
“We’re looking at another 10 years before anybody drives over a new bridge,” Moran said.
He said the bottleneck created by the bridge was creating safety issues in his county.
“I’ve been a commissioner for nine years and all nine years has been working on this problem,” he said. ‘We are hoping that we are getting to a point now that everybody sees the economic value of a replacement bridge.”
Bereano said letters from jurisdictions throughout the state would show widespread support for the massive project, which is expected to cost $7-10 billion.
“It’s going to take some time but if we all work together as we’re trying to do we can do it,” he said.
Commissioner Jim Bunting asked how the new bridge tied in to the traffic issues in Worcester County.
“What we’ve been told by the state is they won’t look at the other choke points until this project is funded,” Moran said.
Commissioner Josh Nordstrom said he wanted to see a new bridge but worried that projects needed in Worcester County—such as improvements to Route 90 and Route 589—weren’t happening. He said they were getting little more than lip service from the Maryland Department of Transportation.
“If you want to make it easier for them to get here you need to make it easier for them to get home as well,” he said.
Bereano said he would relay Worcester’s concerns to transportation officials and see if there was anything that could be done.
Commissioner Chip Bertino reiterated Nordstrom’s frustrations.
“We’ve been told repeatedly they listen to us and they hear what we have to say and are empathetic but nothing gets done,” he said.
Bertino said it seemed counterproductive to support a new bridge when the traffic issues in Worcester County weren’t being addressed.
“Nothing’s happening on our end,” he said. “That’s very frustrating.”
Moran said the curse was Ocean City, as that was where most of the traffic that came to the Eastern Shore was headed. He said counters showed that just 10% of traffic in his county was Queen Anne’s County traffic.
He stressed that the bridge had to be addressed before officials would entertain other major projects.
“We don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel without this project moving forward,” Moran said.
Though Bertino made a motion to revisit the letter of support after Bereano spoke to transportation officials, it failed with just two votes. The commissioners then voted 5-2, with Bertino and Bunting opposed, to draft a letter in support of a replacement Bay Bridge.
