MDOT sets an opening date for Fort Bayou Bridge in Ocean Springs
Drivers counting the days until the Fort Bayou Bridge reopens won’t have much longer to wait.
“We’re still looking at May 21,” said Katy Hornsby, public information officer for Mississippi Department of Transportation.
The drawbridge closed March 14 so crews could remove the bearings that weigh 4,000 pounds each, transport them to a machine shop in Miami to be refurbished, then bring them back to be reinstalled.
The closure of the busy bridge leading out of Ocean Springs on Washington Avenue and Mississippi 609 was to take 45 days — until April 28.
When the repairs proved to be more extensive than anticipated, the schedule for contractor C.E.C. of Lafayette, Louisiana, was extended with the hopes of having the bridge reopened before Memorial Day Weekend.
The new schedule gets it open 10 days before Memorial Day — and ahead of the start of hurricane season on June 1. The bridge is on a hurricane evacuation route.
The detour around the bridge construction added about half an hour to a trip that normally takes a few minutes, depending on traffic. The extra traffic on the detours jammed the Interstate 110 bridge out of Biloxi most afternoons and snarled traffic on U.S. 90. The closure also affected businesses on both side of the bridge.
The $20 million project to upgrade the bridge’s motor, generator, gears and axles and to repaint the bride will be completed in late 2021.
Any lane closures to finish the work will be temporary and done at off hours when possible, Hornsby said.
