fbpx
  • About Us
  • Advertising
  • Legal Notices
Lagniappe Mobile
  • News
    • Cover Story
    • Latest
    • Serial Stories
    • Bay Briefs
    • Community News
    • Open Documents
    • e-Edition
  • Baldwin
  • Commentary
    • Damn the Torpedoes
    • Hidden Agenda
    • Beltway Beat
    • The Real Deal
    • Weather Things
    • The Gadfly
    • Letters to the Editor
  • Cuisine
    • The Dish
    • Word of Mouth
    • Beer and Loathing
    • Cuisine Directory
  • Arts
    • Artifice
    • Art Gallery
    • The Reel World
    • Calendar
  • Music
    • Music Feature
    • Music Briefs
    • Music Listings
    • Submissions
  • Sports
    • The Score
    • The Starting Line-Up
    • From Behind The Mic
    • Upon Further Review
  • Style
    • Media Frenzy
    • Mobile Magnified
    • Horoscopes
    • Master Gardeners
    • Style Feature
  • Lagniappe HD
  • Lagnia-POD

Select Page

Like a bridge to the future

Posted by Rob Holbert | Jul 12, 2017 | Damn the Torpedoes, by Rob Holbert | 0 |

There are so many times while driving to the Gulf that I can’t help thinking how lucky we are to live so close to such glorious beaches — beaches that are the envy of the rest of the country.

But Saturday wasn’t one of those days.

The girlfriend and I were headed to Orange Beach for the Alabama Press Association awards, but figured we’d be smart and wait until close to lunch before leaving. We knew the Blue Angels were packing Pensacola’s beaches and that, combined with the usual Saturday beachgoers, meant the morning was likely to be traffic jam city. But surely by noon all that congestion would be gone — right? Wrong.

We hit Broad Street around noon while making for the Bankhead Tunnel and immediately found bumper-to-bumper traffic. My map app declared trying to go on I-10 an even bigger waste of time. Besides, I am firmly of the opinion that taking The Bayway on the weekend is a sign of severe brain damage, especially if it has even drizzled within the past hour.

We bumped along stop and start until we made it into the Bankhead. Traffic magically seemed a bit better and our spirits lifted even though we had two carloads of people behind us fascinated by the concept of honking inside a tunnel. Don’t they have tunnels in Louisiana?

Once we hit the Causeway, traffic opened up considerably and we roared along at speeds that would have awed people from the horse-and-buggy days. The Bayway was pretty much a parking lot. It always makes me feel smart to look up and see the traffic jam I avoided. I guess that’s the Causeway/Bayway IQ test again.

Traffic was heavy and Beth and I talked about how much more frustrating it is to get to the Gulf now. Really it’s the part about getting out of Mobile that has become especially frustrating. We just have more traffic than our two tunnels can handle.

Lately I’ve had occasion to need to be somewhere in Spanish Fort or Fairhope by 5 or 6 on a Friday evening, and the last time I honestly considered just going over there after lunch and taking a five-hour nap in my car. It’s been a 90-minute trip to Fairhope. Once it took about two hours to get where I was going. I sometimes feel I’m having PTSD flashbacks from Washington, DC traffic.

In DC things were so bad it once took me two hours to get to a Copeland’s that was about three miles away. When I lived in New Orleans I wouldn’t have walked across the street to eat at Copelands, but somehow through the wonders of gridlock I’d just spent two hours driving to eat faux Cajun food. I seriously considered setting my car on fire and just walking home.

That was the thing about DC, on the weekends you actually felt trapped inside the city because it was literally a two-hour trek just to get outside the Beltway. By the time you made it that far whatever energy you might have had was gone and you just wanted to go home.

We’re not that bad yet, but it is truly time to build the I-10 bridge we’ve been talking about for years. A few estimates I’ve seen say building the bridge could take as long as eight years — 10 in government speak — which means at least another decade of traffic jams if we get started this week. And yes, it’s going to be expensive — upwards of $1 billion possibly — but it’s not getting any cheaper by waiting.

I don’t doubt some early delay on the project came from the fierce opposition mounted when a bridge was first proposed. People were worried it would harm our Southern charm, destroy historic buildings and rain soot down upon downtown Mobile. Several different routes had to be discussed over and over again, then rejected, then talked about again.

Eventually the commonness of traffic jams in and around the Wallace Tunnel in particular at least has led to an acceptance by most people that a bridge is needed. There are still some bridge Luddites out there — one of whom is running for mayor.

Upon throwing his hat in the ring for mayor, Sam Jones said he’s not sure whether he supports construction of an I-10 bridge over the Mobile River because he worries it would take people out of downtown. Huh??? So I guess his logic is traffic jams are a downtown attraction?

I can unequivocally say the traffic jam I experienced Saturday definitely made it harder for me to get into downtown Mobile and less happy to be there. Maybe this Friday afternoon Sam should stand on the sidewalk with a big cardboard sign that says I-10 Bridge on it with a huge X through it and see how many donations people toss at his feet as they inch by. I’d imagine any hand gestures directed his way would not be thumbs up.

Opposing the bridge at this point is really the domain of people who never actually drive anywhere. Maybe Sam only drives between his house and the water board these days, but he clearly doesn’t have much of an idea about how clogged things are getting. And it’s only going to get worse.

Walmart and Amazon both are building major distribution centers in the area. That’s just going to mean more trucks on the road, and there’s at least some likelihood those two centers could attract other distribution centers as they did in Savannah. But what would be a boon for the local economy isn’t going to make for an easier trip through the tunnels, or over the Cochran Bridge for that matter.

I’m sure this is at least the fifth or sixth column I’ve written over the past decade about the need for a bridge, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be much closer to becoming a reality. Perhaps we’re waiting for some kind of epic gridlock event.

In addition to helping to alleviate our traffic issues, the I-10 bridge could end up enhancing our skyline and becoming an attraction of its own. Hopefully it will be constructed with bike paths and walking paths that would give it multiple uses.

But even if it’s just a plain old gray bridge that just moves more trucks and cars across the river, we need it. Getting across the bay is already tough enough and, with a notable exception or two, I can’t imagine many of us want to feel trapped in our own city.

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. During the month of December, give (or get) a one year subscription with TWO months FREE.

Share:

Rate:

PreviousThe Gadfly: July 13, 2017
NextDistrict 1 Candidates discuss neighborhood priorities

About The Author

Rob Holbert

Rob Holbert

Rob Holbert is co-publisher and managing editor of Lagniappe, Mobile’s independent newspaper. Rob helped found the newspaper after a career that started as a police reporter and columnist at the Mississippi Press in Pascagoula. He followed that with a stint as a deputy press secretary for then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in Washington, D.C. After leaving Capitol Hill, Rob worked ghost-writing opinion articles for publication in some of the nation’s largest newspapers. From 1999 through Aug. 2010 he was the faculty adviser for the University of South Alabama student newspaper, The Vanguard, and in 2002 started Lagniappe with his business partner Ashley Trice. The paper now prints 30,000 copies every week and is distributed at more than 1,300 locations around Mobile and Baldwin Counties. According to Scarborough Research, Lagniappe now has more than 80,000 readers each week, with close to a quarter of that coming online. The paper began publishing weekly at the beginning of April 2014.

Related Posts

Manzie will decide annexation

Manzie will decide annexation

November 6, 2019

The fatiguing prospects of two August elections

The fatiguing prospects of two August elections

June 28, 2017

Time for the mind to wander back

Time for the mind to wander back

May 20, 2020

Strange predictions from a stranger visitor

Strange predictions from a stranger visitor

January 20, 2021

Recommended Stories

Fried chicken with ‘Hart’

By Andy MacDonald

Has Big Tech made us better?

By Rob Holbert

A nice daydream 

By Ashley Trice

NSFW hit launches country artist’s career

By Stephen Centanni

A reiteration from the ether

By Kevin Lee


  • Advertising
  • About Us
  • Contacts
  • Jobs
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

Search This Site

Browse the Archives

© Lagniappe Mobile 2021

[yop_poll id=”-1″]