DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709280084

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND                    LENGTH:   86 lines

BUILDING THE STATE'S LONGEST BRIDGE WHEN COMPLETE, THE 5.8-MILE, 4-LANE MANNS HARBOR SPAN WILL LINK THE DARE COUNTY MAINLAND TO THE OUTER BANKS.

North Carolina's longest bridge will link the Dare County mainland to the Outer Banks.

The new Manns Harbor bridge will be 5.8 miles long, 65 feet high and four lanes wide.

Construction is scheduled to start in early spring 1998.

And by the time the $141 million project is completed four years later, transportation officials estimate, an average of 6,400 vehicles will drive across the span each day.

In 1994, an average of 3,700 motorists travelled across the Manns Harbor bridge.

``We're going to begin accepting construction bids in February for the new span. Everything's pretty well set with the plans,'' state Department of Transportation Project Engineer Art McMillan said Thursday from his Raleigh office. ``I'm down here dotting the I's and crossing the T's right now.''

Responding to comments cyclists made at a February public hearing in Manteo, transportation officials recently agreed to include aluminum bike rails along the entire length of the bridge. No separate bike lanes are planned. But there will be 4-foot-wide shoulders on both sides of the bridge.

``The bike rails are 42 inches high - tall enough that, if a cyclist hit them, he wouldn't fall off into the sound,'' McMillan said. ``Motorists will still be able to see through the rails, though. They won't obstruct the view.''

Once the new bridge opens, drivers approaching the Outer Banks from Raleigh will be able to bypass Manteo completely.

The new span will route traffic from the T-intersection where U.S. 64 joins U.S. 264 in Manns Harbor to just south of Manteo at the Midway Intersection, where the road to Wanchese branches off.

Motorists heading to the barrier island beaches from Manns Harbor will get a straight shot across the Croatan Sound to the base of the Washington Baum Bridge to Nags Head.

Summer traffic should decrease considerably in downtown Manteo because people won't be passing through on their way from the beaches to the mainland.

But anyone who wants to go through Roanoke Island - or to the aquarium, Lost Colony outdoor drama or Elizabethean Gardens - will still be able to do so because engineers decided to leave the old span in place.

``You can still go the old way - right to Manteo from Manns Harbor - by travelling on the old bridge,'' McMillan said.

The existing bridge, built in 1955, has about 20 years of life left, transportation department officials said. It is 2.7 miles long, 45 feet high and two lanes wide.

To build the new bridge, state officials will have to buy and bulldoze two homes - one in Manns Harbor and one in Manteo. Two vacant buildings near the bridge's ends also will have to be removed. And the insurance company at Midway Intersection in Manteo will have to be demolished.

About 14 acres of wetlands will be disturbed in and around the Croatan Sound.

And the speed limit on the mainland will be raised from 35 to 45 mph.

``There's a second part of the project that calls for widening the road in Manns Harbor from two to five lanes,'' McMillan said. ``That will cost $3.3 million and is part of the plan to make U.S. 64 four lanes all the way from Raleigh to the Outer Banks. The road widening also will be done by the spring of 2002.

``And we're still studying the flyover idea,'' McMillan said, referring to a suggestion some engineers made to build an elevated roadway between Manteo and Nags Head. Roanoke Island business owners opposed that plan, fearing it would divert drivers from Manteo's business district. But McMillan said transportation officials will ``wait to see how the new span does once it's open, and how things are going, until we even consider adding a flyover.''

When it's finished, the new Manns Harbor bridge will be more than two miles longer than any other bridge in the state.

The longest bridge now is 3.5 miles long and is on N.C. 32, over the Albemarle Sound, near Edenton and Pleasant Grove.

The Outer Banks area is home to the next three longest spans already, state bridge expert Wayne Elliot said Friday: the Alligator River bridge on U.S. 64; the Wright Memorial Bridge across the Currituck Sound on U.S. 158; and the Oregon Inlet bridge to Hatteras Island. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

COMPARING THE BRIDGES

Source: N.C. Department of Transportation

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

Map

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