In the last several months, Mobile area residents and visitors alike could see physical work beginning on the landmark Mobile River Bridge, entering the construction phase of a project that has started and stopped several times over nearly 30 years. In early August the anticipated approval was announced for a federal loan considered paramount for the largest transportation project in Alabama history to become a reality. The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan will finance up to 49 percent of the project, which will allow for actual work to begin on the 215-foot-tall cable-stayed bridge, beginning near I-10 and Virginia Street in Mobile.
Once those efforts begin in earnest, they will validate the diligent, decades-long advocacy of dozens of public leaders and private citizens. This effort dates to the late 1990s, when the Mobile Chamber created the Build the Bridge Coalition under the leadership of then-President and CEO Win Hallett.
The Coalition was necessitated by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s mid-1990s finding of severe volume overload on the existing I-10 stretch through Mobile and Baldwin counties, specifically the Bayway and the Wallace Tunnel. Originally designed to carry an average of 35,000 vehicles per day, these routes routinely saw double that volume, topping 100,000 on holidays. The resulting gridlock throughout the summer and on weekends historically overloaded neighboring communities, such as the Eastern Shore, where U.S. 98 regularly grinds to a halt around the I-10 interchange…