Bay bridge was once proposed from Calvert
Three options were considered in the ‘60s
Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced last week a two-year, $5 million study to investigate where a new bridge could be built across the Chesapeake Bay to alleviate the bottleneck at the existing two spans that persists all summer long.
Maryland spent $1 million on a study in the early 1960s to map out new bridge locations across the Chesapeake, which included a proposal for a crossing between Cove Point in Calvert County to Dorchester County,
then at an estimated cost of $90 million.
St. Mary’s County Commissioner Todd Morgan (R), who is up for consideration as delegate for District 29C between portions of Calvert and St. Mary’s counties, said he does not want to see another bridge proposed from Calvert to the Eastern Shore.
“I applaud Governor Hogan for bringing this up, but it’s going to take years to get there,” Morgan said Friday, “First, though, I’d like to see the Thomas Johnson bridge replaced, followed by the Harry Nice bridge.”
There isn’t enough infrastructure in Calvert or Dorchester to support a bridge crossing between the two, Morgan said. “I don’t see any advantage to Calvert. Then you add a bridge and the LNG plant, more ship traffic. You get all the traffic and I don’t see any tangible economic benefits,” he said.
“Simultaneously, you add the span in Calvert, how much more traffic would come through St. Mary’s to get there? That piles onto the [Thomas Johnson] bridge. No win there, either,” he said.
The original two-lane bay bridge (today’s eastbound span) opened on July 30, 1952. Work began in 1949 and cost $45 million. The bridge between Anne Arundel and Queen Anne’s County carried 35,700 vehicles on its first Labor Day weekend in 1952, according to The Baltimore Sun. The bridge’s capacity was 1,500 vehicles an hour in each direction for 8.5 million vehicles a year. The bridge carried 870,000 vehicles in that first year in 1952, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
But it wasn’t long before the need for a second bridge across the bay was evident.
A decade later, the Maryland State Roads Commission was already studying where a second span could be built to alleviate the weekend traffic tie-ups on the bay bridge.
Three options were considered: a new crossing near Baltimore to Kent County, a parallel span to the existing bridge and a southern crossing between Cove Point in Calvert County to Dorchester County.
The Baltimore area bridge and its numerous approaches needed was estimated to cost $175 million in 1964. The parallel span was estimated to cost $75 million. The southern bridge was estimated to cost $90 million.
In February 1964 the Maryland Roads Commission chose the parallel span for the second bay crossing.
Del. James H. Caldwell (D) of Wicomico County decried that decision, advocating the southern crossing instead for its potential “colossal impact on two growing sections of Maryland,” the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland, The Sun reported on Feb. 18, 1964.
Caldwell said a southern bridge would reduce the trip for corn and soybean growers in Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore by 150 miles, provide for the expansion of utilities and electricity and provide easier access for tourist destinations in Maryland and Virginia.
But John B. Funk, chairman of the state roads commission, said that if all three new bridges were built, “74 percent of the people wanting to cross the bay would use the Sandy Point bridge, 14 percent would use the northern bridge and 12 percent would use the southern bridge,” The Sun reported on March 14, 1965.
The existing bay bridge was expected to reach its full capacity by 1967.
Funk continued, “We know that eventually all three bridges will be needed, and all three will be built. Building a parallel one first does not preclude the others. It is merely a matter of timing.”
In Hogan’s announcement last week of a new bridge study, Pete K. Rahn, secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation, said, “The bay bridge can be maintained safely through 2065 with preservation and maintenance work; however, studies show that by 2040, motorists could experience up to 14-mile delays.”
The span carried 25.7 million vehicles in fiscal 2015, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
By 1966, the focus for Southern Maryland lawmakers was to get a bridge built across the Patuxent River to link Calvert and St. Mary’s counties rather than get a new bay bridge crossing from Calvert to Dorchester.
“There is no secret that the Patuxent bridge proposal got its impetus because the [J. Millard Tawes] administration went on a horse-trading expedition for votes for the parallel bridge” across the Chesapeake, The Sun wrote on March 11, 1966.
“Southern Maryland legislators last year were overwhelmingly in favor of a southern bay crossing,” the paper reported.
Funk said in that year he anticipated 700 cars a day on the Patuxent River bridge.
Today, the Gov. Thomas Johnson Bridge carries more than 27,000 vehicles a day. Construction began on that bridge in September 1972 and it opened in December 1977 at a cost of $26 million. The state is now planning on a replacement span, but there is only some design money currently funded.
In 1966, Maryland voters said no to the parallel bay bridge span in a November referendum by a 289,418-to-248,942 vote, but Tawes went around them to proclaim that a second span was needed on an emergency basis.
Construction began on the second bay bridge span on May 19, 1969, and the threelane bridge opened on June 28, 1973, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority. It now serves as the westbound span of the Gov. William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge — the official name of the bay bridge.
That second span cost $120 million — $42 million more than estimated.