Vero Beach council faces no-win situation with Alma Lee Loy Bridge: Will it blink?
While Vero Beach City Council has been fiddling with narrowing from seven to four lanes Indian River County's main east-west road through downtown and making it easier for golf carts to travel near the beach shopping area, there’s a firestorm brewing just above the Indian River Lagoon.
Now the three council members gung-ho for the narrowing ― Rey Neville, John Carroll and Linda Moore ― will get to play "chicken" with the concept of cutting lanes at their 9:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday.
They’ll be presented the option of recommending whether to close the entire Alma Lee Loy (17th Street) Bridge for two years and nine months or closing half of it at a time for a whopping four years and five months while repairs are made.
Alma Lee Loy Bridge plans change
The 2022 plan: When will work near Vero Beach's Alma Lee Loy Bridge finally end? Spring 2026?
Dig deeper: How Alma Lee Loy might have reacted to spalling challenge of her bridge namesake
Broken bridge: Concrete crumbles, steel rusts as work begins on 'structurally deficient' Alma Lee Loy Bridge in Vero Beach
Delays continue: Ready for Interstate 95 construction to be done in Indian River County? Me, too
What they said earlier this year: FDOT to begin $22 million, 5-year repairs on Alma Lee Loy Bridge. Here's what to know
There’s no good option, even if some city residents asked the Florida Department of Transportation to look at potentially getting the project done faster by closing the entire bridge during the next round of repairs.
In February 2022, when FDOT unveiled its plan to repair the bridge, work would begin this summer and end in spring 2026. The project would replace the eastern 400 feet of bridge, seal the entire deck surface, then improve Causeway Boulevard, including the intersection at State Road A1A, for $13.5 million.
The project, supposed to begin in May, has been pushed back to September. It now will cost $22.3 million and not be completed until at least summer 2028.
No joke.
The only laughing matter is FDOT’s projection on when work will be done. It doesn’t have a good track record predicting outcomes.
Like the last Loy bridge project. Temporary repairs to fix cement cracking below the bridge deck that exposed rusting metal supports and replace 35 light poles damaged in 2017's Hurricane Irma didn’t start until early 2020, though two lanes of traffic were closed months earlier.
FDOT project delays not unusual
Initially, the project was supposed to take six months. An array of issues, including losing the original contractor, delayed completion until May 2022.
Delays were reminiscent of those in the 2010s when Interstate 95 was widened to three lanes from State Road 60 to the Brevard County line.
Carnage littered the area as wrecks were prevalent while construction zone speed limits across the 12.5-mile stretch remained at 70 mph. Finally, Fellsmere officials, tired of the interstate being shut down and requiring rerouting of traffic through the city, persuaded FDOT to lower it to 60 mph.
The project took almost twice as long as it was supposed to ― more than two years behind schedule ― even though the contractor had to pay $9,500 a day in damages for the delays.
Fort Pierce bridge expected to be done faster
As far as the Loy bridge is concerned, it would have been one thing for FDOT to have previously spent two years fixing the bridge, then three (!) more repairing it and working on Causeway and A1A. But to now take almost five more years to complete the project?
It's unbelievable.
Heck, a new bridge in Fort Pierce, where work has just begun, is expected to be done a year before the Loy bridge repairs, according to Monte Falls, Vero Beach city manager.
I raised the question of a new Loy bridge with FDOT last year. I was told it didn’t pay to build a new one when the old one, completed in 1979, could last until 2054.
Chances are relatively few Baby Boomers like me will be around to see a new bridge, which if current plans for the three corners the city owns at 17th Street and Indian River Boulevard become a reality, could really enhance the area.
Sadly, at the rate we’re going, there could be 10,000 Indian River County residents ― based on Florida Department of Health statistics ― who won’t be alive to see the end of the Loy bridge repair project. About 2,000 die each year.
Read the details: Vero Beach City Manager Monte Falls outlines the Loy bridge project, including pros-cons of closing all lanes
Weighing pros and cons
Falls and his team created a list of pros and cons on the shortened closing, which would add the Loy's 22,000 cars a day to the Merrill Barber Bridge (which already carries 20,000) and jeopardize safety, according to local first responders.
As much as I don’t like a proposed 2028 end date ― it’s a slap in the face from FDOT after its 2022 announcement ― it’s the best of two bad alternatives (especially if they can speed things up by working at night), and one suggested by city staff. And jeepers, bridges destroyed by Hurricane Ian and a wreck on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia were re-opened in weeks or days, not years.
Then again, Neville, Carroll and Moore could try and argue that slowing down traffic by closing the bridge and cramming it into a smaller footprint will be safer.
I just wish they’d been paying more attention to this project than fiddling around fixing problems that don’t exist, like the Twin Pairs.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Alma Lee Loy Bridge closures: Bad options all-around in Vero Beach
