On a recent Thursday morning, traffic into Midtown Palm Beach as well as the North End was at a standstill.
Almost simultaneously, both the Flagler Memorial and Royal Park bridges rose, preventing vehicles from traveling between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach.
The cause: A barge traveling south from Peanut Island to a joint federal-county project near the Lake Worth Bridge.
The unscheduled bridge openings for barges ferrying dredged material to and from the $14 million Bonefish Cove project have increased frustration for drivers who are already disheartened by the gridlock that has gripped the island.
It’s a situation already made more difficult by the U.S. Secret Service-ordered closure of South Ocean Boulevard next to Mar-a-Lago when President-elect Donald Trump is home — a closure that most recently has been in effect since Nov. 4, before Trump was declared the winner of the Nov. 5 general election.
One resident emailed the town Nov. 27 to say that the unscheduled bridge openings for Bonefish Cove-destined barges are making an already difficult situation even worse. “Something has to be done,” she wrote.