Cow Key bridge repair timeline gets more pushback

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

To complain or not to complain. That is the Shakespearian question facing city officials on the issue of repairing Cow Key Channel Bridge, the only roadway onto the island.

With the state Department of Transportation (FDOT) proposing to repair the salt-corroded bridge over a one-year timeframe beginning in April 2020, city officials have raised concerns about the lengthy project, which will reduce the four-lane roadway – which passes over two adjacent bridges, one for outbound traffic and the other for inbound – to one lane in each direction during construction. In addition to creating potentially massive traffic jams, there could be public safety issues because the Lower Keys Medical Center is on the opposite side of the bridge as Key West. And if a hurricane evacuation order comes during a period when U.S. 1 is reduced to two lanes, it could create a devasting traffic nightmare.

When FDOT first proposed the $3.2 million repair project in September it was with a 16-20-month time estimate. Since then, FDOT has reduced its estimate to 370 days for project completion. And it also plans to include a $500,000 incentive to contractors if they can finish the project in 250 days.

“That’s four months [less] and it’s very positive,” said Key West City Commissioner Sam Kaufman at the Nov. 7 commission meeting, referring to the new 370-day estimate. “But I still think that we should, in our continued discussions with FDOT… ensure that the contract proposals they put out, that we see 24-hour, seven day a week construction to minimize the time.”

But pumping up city demands to FDOT worried city Manager Jim Scholl, who warned commissioners that “community adjustments” to state projects in the past have sometimes led transportation officials to delay a project because of the added costs caused by those adjustments.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea in this case,” he said. “I’d hate to put any specific details into a work plan that is something that’s not ours.”

Scholl added that although the project timeline may be 370 days, road closures likely won’t occur during that entire time. Project preparations, road marking and equipment staging won’t require one side to be closed, he said. And project timelines usually have weather delays built in that may not be needed.

“Every one of those [370] days isn’t going to [require] half of the bridge closed down,” Scholl said.

Still, commissioners voted unanimously to send a cautious letter to FDOT, first thanking it for reducing the project estimated timeline but then asking for more information on how FDOT came to its 370-day estimate. Kaufman said the city’s engineering department believes the project should take 180 to 250 days at most and while he doesn’t want to cause trouble with FDOT, “changing out three sections on a short bridge should not take a year.”

“So, I think we can push more,” he added.

Commissioners Billy Wardlow and Clayton Lopez were also concerned that the Cow Key Channel Bridge repair might overlap with several other planned state and county road construction projects, including work on South Roosevelt Boulevard, Bertha Street and the expansion of the Ocean Walk apartment complex on South Roosevelt. On that project, commissioners gave final approval at the same Nov. 7 meeting to expanding the condominium complex by 80 apartments in two new buildings.

The Ocean Walk project had been postponed for years due to objections from homeowners’ associations on the property, worried that construction and the influx of new tenants would increase traffic and congestion on the one road that provides ingress and egress from the property onto South Roosevelt Blvd. After extensive negotiations, the corporate owners of Ocean Walk agreed to assume all maintenance and repair costs to the access road. In addition, language will be added to the development plan that allows the city to withhold building permits until a maintenance agreement receives the blessing of all five homeowners’ associations.

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