The Salt Line, Vol. 108: The Bridge Gets Its Groundbreaking, and the Operative Verb Is 'Hope'

The Lead: the tunnel was the only ramp meter we had

On Friday there will be a groundbreaking ceremony, which is the one part of a bridge that has never been hard to build. After what WKRG fairly describes as decades of talking about it, construction on a new Interstate 10 bridge across the Mobile River is scheduled to begin in October.

If you have ever driven to this coast from the west, you know the problem personally. It’s the Wallace Tunnel, where an interstate’s worth of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas plates funnels under the river and then out onto the long, low road across the bay. Whole vacations have been shortened there by an afternoon.

So I’m for the bridge, and decades is long enough to think anything over. But read the headline closely. Baldwin County leaders “hope” the multi-billion-dollar project helps ease traffic. Hope is a modest warranty on a purchase of that size, and I suspect the word was chosen honestly, by people who know their own roads.

Here is what they know. The bridge fixes the crossing. It doesn’t add a lane to anything south of the interstate. For years the tunnel has served as Baldwin County’s only working ramp meter, releasing beach traffic toward Highway 59 and the Beach Express a dose at a time, by accident, at no cost to the county. Take the meter away, and the same cars arrive on time and all together, at the same exits, bound for the same two roads to the same sand. The backup doesn’t vanish. It moves south and changes jurisdiction.

That’s an argument for finishing the job, never for skipping the bridge. And for as long as construction runs, the old excuse holds: whatever went wrong with your drive, it started in Mobile. The day the ribbon is cut, the excuse retires, and every mile of brake lights between the interstate and the Gulf becomes a local product. Until then, next summer’s advice is this summer’s: cross the bay early or cross it late.

So hold the ceremony. It has been earned several times over. Then spend the construction years on the unphotogenic part, the roads at the bottom of the ramp. A multi-billion-dollar bridge deserves a better verb than “hope,” and only the roads south of it can supply one.

✈️ A study of tourism, commissioned by tourism

A new study estimates that this year’s Pensacola Beach Air Show generated $39 million in local economic impact. It was conducted by Downs & St. Germain Research for Visit Pensacola, which is to say the agency charged with promoting tourism asked whether tourism pays and was told that it does. I don’t doubt the beach was full. I doubt the genre, which counts the dollars that crossed the bridge to the island and none of the hours spent parked on it. The better figure sits behind the big one: 206,700 total attendees, but 133,500 unique ones. The difference is people who came back for another day, bridge and all. No multiplier says it better.

In praise of the spare pipe

At Monday night’s council meeting, Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan highlighted a $2 million grant from the Baldwin County Commission toward a new 12-inch water main loop east of Fish River. A loop is the least glamorous thing a city can buy: a second route for water that already has a first one, so that a break or a repair on one line doesn’t become a dry tap somewhere else. The mayor’s word for it was reliability. The money comes through a disaster-recovery program tied to hurricanes Sally and Zeta, and a hurricane is a thorough instructor in the value of a spare. Nobody throws a ceremony for reliability. When it works, the only evidence is a Tuesday on which nothing happened. So note that in the week the region breaks ground on a new way in for cars, Fairhope arranged a second way in for water. Only one gets a ceremony Friday, and it isn’t the one you’d miss first.

🐢 Catch and release, the long way around

Three loggerhead sea turtles are back in the Gulf after rehab. All three were hooked earlier this month at Gulf State Park Pier. There’s no villain here. A pier is the address where baited hooks and hungry turtles both do their business. What deserves notice is that, three times in one month, somebody evidently reported it rather than cutting the line and studying the horizon. Rehab is the expensive end of that story. The report is the cheap end, and the only end the rest of us control. If a loggerhead takes your bait this fall, the fish can wait.

🎶 Foley rules on the length of lunch

The Midday Melodies concert series returns to Foley: free, at Heritage Park, every Wednesday in October, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Consider the hours. A city has put in writing that lunch may run three hours, provided there is a band. I move that the rest of the coast adopt the Foley standard at once, on both sides of the state line, retroactive to Labor Day. October is the month this coast hands its towns back to the people who live in them, and a free concert at noon on a Wednesday is aimed squarely at someone with a job nearby and a flexible relationship with it.

The Closer

Most of the official business this week concerned arrival: how to get people here faster, and how to count them once they’ve come. The quieter work was about what a place owes whatever turns up. A spare water main. A long lunch. A hook taken out by someone who knows how. A coast likes to be judged by its groundbreakings. I’d start with the unhooking.

— Chris

P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop or event this site is missing, Florida side or Alabama side? Add it. It’s free, and no bridge is required: /submit/