CORPUS CHRISTI — At Tuesday’s city council meeting, a completion timeline for the new Harbor Bridge was announced.
Officials with Flat Iron Dragados, the engineering firm heading the project, said it will be finished in 2024.
“We’re moving forward now,” Rickey Dailey, with TXDOT, said. “We have a timeline. We have a completion date. An estimated completion date.”
“It opens up a lot of opportunity for the city of Corpus Christi for new businesses for new residential prospects,” Ben Molina said.
Added features include higher clearance for ships and less sharp turns for drivers.
Construction resumed on the north and south towers.
“These are the pylons that will hold the main spans,” Dailey said. “These towers will be 538 feet tall. Very tall structures. Some of the tallest in South Texas.”
City officials said the community expressed concerns about the current Harbor Bridge and how crews are taking care of it.
“They are continuing maintenance,” Molina said. “They’re doing annual inspections and have a maintenance plan in place to address any concerns that have come up during the inspection.”
Engineers said instead of two exits on north beach, the new bridge will have one.
“We wanna understand how that will look traffic wide because, if it’s going to be a stop at beach street, well then it stops traffic as you’re coming off the off ramp,” city councilman, Gil Hernandez said.
Hernandez said it’s been a lingering concern and wants traffic studies to be done to make sure there’s not a dead stop before exiting to North Beach
“Public safety is the top concern for this project,” Dailey said. “That’s why we paused it for awhile.”
Engineers said another safety feature will be two 10-foot wide shoulders on the north and southbound lanes of the bridge.
The project will also include much other work that simply building the new bridge.
There's also reconstruction of parts of U.S. Highway 181.
It will have three lanes in each direction, with a median, road shoulders and paths for bike and pedestrian traffic.
Another 1.6 miles of Interstate 37 will be reconstructed to fit the design of the new bridge.
And about a mile of the Crosstown Expressway also will be worked on.
