The oft-delayed four-year project to rebuild the crumbling 17th Street Bridge was delayed once again by more than a week at the very last minute.
Just as the 22,000 Vero Beach-area motorists were getting used to the idea of the total closure of the 17th Street Bridge for 2 ½ days starting at midnight last Monday, word came down from the Florida Department of Transportation and the contractor, the Vecellio Group from West Palm Beach, that the start of the project would be postponed again, this time by a little more than a week.
“We heard that the Florida DOT won’t start tonight as they originally said they would,” Vero Beach Police Department officers said Monday night. “It’s a real pain – all this yes, and no, and then no again. The communication on this whole thing has been not been good, to say the least.”
The total closure of all lanes of the heavily-traveled bridge, also known as the Alma Lee Loy bridge, is now scheduled to start next Thursday, Sept. 6, and last through Saturday, Sept. 8. All traffic to and from the island will then have to detour over the Merrill P. Barber bridge, or the Wabasso bridge further north.
“I guess they heard about this hurricane and they were a little scared of a little wind and a little bit of rain,” a police official said, “so they decided to put it off again.”
Hurricane Idalia was supposed to hit Florida’s West Coast sometime late Tuesday, and the outer bands of the hurricane were forecast to bring higher-than-normal winds and some rain, possibly with thunderstorms, to our area.
During the total closure of the bridge, crews will start laying out new traffic patterns to reopen traffic on the bridge for one lane each way for the next four years, alternating between the northbound and southbound lanes.
In the first phase of the construction, the easternmost 400-foot section of the bridge at the island edge of the span that had crumbling concrete and rested metal will be entirely replaced, while utility circuits attached to the bridge will be temporarily moved in order not to interrupt telephone, cable, water and sewer lines to island residents.
Communication between the Florida Department of Transportation, the contractor and city and county authorities as to when and how the bridge will be closed to motor vehicle traffic has been a sore point from the beginning, with Vero Beach city officials bitterly complaining about lack of information from the state transportation officials.
