Welcome back to 504 Road Trips! There's no road
trip today, but I'm here to discuss the closure of US Highway 90 across the Louisiana Mississippi
State Line. The picture you see here, taken on one of our very early road trips, is the US-90 bridge
over the Pearl River, connecting the two states. This has long been the scenic route out to the
Mississippi Gulf Coast for many New Orleanians, and it's a good way to avoid the Interstate.
However, on May 24, 2022, inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Transportation
and Development failed a bridge inspection, and the highway was closed indefinitely. In
an August 30th article from WVUE New Orleans, the DOTD found that "deterioration of the steel
truss had reached a point that it was no longer safe for drivers." Meanwhile, "Inspectors
closed four other bridges along the same stretch of highway due to similar structrual
deficiencies." WVUE interviewed Gary Gilmore, a boat captain at Cajun Encounters, a swamp
tour company located on Highway 90 in Slidell, just before the West Pearl River Bridge, the
westernmost of the five closed bridges. Businesses along US-90 between Slidell and Pearlington are
the hardest hit because they attract customers from both sides of the state line, and now, what
would normally be a short drive is a lengthy trek. Gilmore is quoted as saying "Typically on a
day like this, we should be running eight boats, nine boats. We're running two. So we're cutting
down from 200 people per tour to about 40."
"A spokesperson for DOTD said that all bridges
along this route are more than 90 years old." "This stretch of US-90 helps connect Slidell
to Pearlington, Mississippi, but with the bridge closures, drivers are forced to travel
around, in some cases tripling travel time".
Illustrated on the map is a simple trip from the
south part of Slidell to Pearlington, Mississippi, which would normally be a 4 mile drive. US-90
is in green, I-10 in red, and the only other possible way around, should I-10 be jammed up,
is a convoluted trip up into Mississippi in blue, topping out at over 57 miles. At one time, there
was a shortcut through through the NASA Stennis facility, but that's long been shut down to
civilians. And there's no reasonable way to get between coastal Louisiana and Mississippi
without getting onto an Interstate.
The article continues "DOTD said there is no
funding allocated to replace the closed bridges along US 90. The costs to replace all the bridges
along Hwy 90 is estimated to be more than $250 million. So for now, this portion of Hwy 90 will
remain closed for an undetermined amount of time, and drivers will have to go around."
On November 18, 2022, Nola.com ran an article stating that "The Louisiana Department
of Transportation and Development has proposed replacing the deteriorating drawbridge over
hte West Peral River on U.S. 90. But the bidding period won't even open until 2025."
"The agency estimates the cost for replacing the West Pearl Bridge, and three others along
the same stretch of U.S. 90 at $60 million to $95 million." Spokesperson Brandie Bordelon was
quoted as saying "All four bridges need to be replaced before this coridor can reopen".
So the cost of the project has gone down since the August article, which is promising.
The article continues "The latest traffic count in the area, 2021, showed
around 3,300 vehicles per day".
I would venture to guess that the traffic count is
seasonal. In my experience, during the wintertime, you can drive from New Orleans East to Highway
607 in Mississippi and only see a handful of cars, but during the summer, when people are at their
Lake Catherine camps, and traveling back and forth from the coast, there's a lot more traffic.
The DOTD has proposed replacing the drawbridge, and the article doesn't specify which bridge, as
the West Pearl River and the main channel of the Pearl both have vertical lift drawbridges.
But in conjunction with the Coast Guard, a "comment period was opened in October for input
on a new bridge's proposed clearance height. Th agency proposes replacing the drawbridge
with a fixed bridge that would have 12-foot clearance above water, a decrease of 6 feet
from the current drawbridge when closed".
What this means for marine traffic is
that the waterway will be less passable with the new fixed bridge than it is now when the
drawbridge is in the down position. "When opened, the current bridge has a vertical
lift span of 110 feet. Horizontally, the proposal calls for a narrow navigational
clearance for boaters, decreasing from 90 to 60 feet. The article quotes Jason Jaworski of
the town of Pearl River, saying "A fixed bridge with only a 12-foot clearance is pretty much going
to block the river off from any kind of barge or houseboat traffic or anything of any size".
And my favorite part of the article, and the very reason I'm covering this is "Long before
I-10 was built and became the preferred route, generations of New Orleanians used U.S. 90 to
get from the city to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and points farther east." This has always
been my preferred route, with multiple trips each year between New Orleans and the Coast for
my entire life, and unless I'm in a big rush, I take Highway 90 at least one way. I-10 in
Mississippi has only been complete since 1982, and my childhood trips to the coast
date back several years before that.
But we back up to the most important point
in this article here, that US-90 "becomes a vital alternative when Interstate 10 at
the Louisiana-Mississippi line is shut down, which has happened several times recently."
This leads us to a Biloxi Sun Herald Article, dated November 29, that reads "Interstate 10, a
highway that spans from Florida to California, is driven by hundreds of thousands of
people every day across the U.S.
"But on the Mississippi Coast, it's also
the site of many accidents, traffic snarls, and road closures--and it's recently gotten
so much attention that one portion of the interstate in Hancock County is dubbed a
'death trap' by some local commuters.
The portion of I-10 at the Mississippi-Louisiana
state line has made headlines multiple times over the last year, particularly after
a semi-truck hauling BMWs crashed on the bridge that connects Hancock County
to St. Tammany Parish in January.
"The fiery wreck closed both lanes of the bridge
for hours, then one lane of the bridge was closed for months for repairs, causing daily traffic
delays for hours. In an almost identical spot earlier this month, another 18-wheeler caught
fire after crashing into the bridge railing.
"Another incident in March saw a four car,
one eighteen-wheeler pileup that sent six people to the hospital, one of which had
to be evacuated by a medical helicopter.
"Traffic snarls at the state line were made
worse when the West Pearl River bridge closed for repairs in Louisiana. Commuters could
often take the scenic route on U.S. 90 through Pearlington and into Louisiana, but
the bridge closure makes that impossible.
"The high volume of traffic that moves through the
interstate every day may be a contributing factor to these traffic accidnts, officials with the
Mississippi Department of Transportation said."
What this article fails to mention is that
the I-10 bridge over the Pearl River is aging and substandard. Built in 1970, the bridge at
the state line is two lanes, like all of I-10 between the I-10/12/59 split and the Jourdan
River, but it doesn't have the required 3 1/2 foot shoulders on each side that are required of
any existing bridge over 200 feet in length.
Back to the article, "Though many commuters
who travel this route daily have not been in an accident themselves, everyone has heard
of the I-10 pile-ups and 18 wheeler fires that have made headlines this year.
"'Specifically on that bridge going into Louisiana, it's all been 18 wheelers,' said Brian
Velasquez, a Mississippi resident who drives I-10 to Slidell every day on the way to work.
"'I tell all my friends that I-10 is a death trap because there's always something
happening on I-10. I live in Diamondhead, and from Diamondhead to the state line there's
always something, at least twice a month."
Another commuter, Wesley Roy commented
"When you go up on the bridge, there's this narrowing effect that people have
because the shoulder widths are very thin, so people slow down, and if someone changes
their speed that's where the accident happpens, right before you get on the bridge."
The article continues "MDOT has plans in the works that they say will make I-10 safer in
Hancock County. There's a 2023 project scheduled to make median improvements from the Louisiana
state line to Mississippi 603." End quote
This fails to address the problem
with the bridge over the Pearl River, which I assume would have to be a joint
project between MDOT and Louisiana DOTD.
So, I hope this outlines the huge problem the
closure of US-90 has created, and the lack of options for detours. We hope to see Highway 90
opened again sooner, rather than later, and of course, as soon as that happens, we'll be there
to film whatever improvements they've made.
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