Study offers options for Tampa cruise ships

TAMPA — The state’s long-awaited Tampa Bay cruise-ship study was released Tuesday, laying out the local options for an industry that is increasingly turning toward mega-cruise ships that won’t fit under the Sunshine Skyway.

The bay area’s cruise-ship port is at Port Tampa Bay, in the Channel District area of downtown Tampa. But to get to Tampa, the ships must travel beneath the bridge and sail up Tampa Bay.

The Florida Department of Transportation study lays out the feasibility of the three options facing the Bay Area cruiseship industry in the future:

The state could build a new Sunshine Skyway that can allow the massive new cruise ships the industry is rapidly adopting to pass under it. The current bridge, finished in 1987, isn’t tall enough to allow cruise ships of the future.

According to the FDOT report, the Skyway can handle cruise ships that measure 180 feet from the top of the waterline. But mega-ships can sit as high as 225 feet above the waterline.

The report also addresses the option of raising the Skyway. But neither bridge option is cheap— or convenient for commuters.

Building a new Skyway would cost $2 billion. It would also take two years to tear down the old bridge and four to build a new one.

Raising the existing bridge would cost up to $1.5 billion, leave the bridge closed for 18 months to two years, and take three years to complete. But that option also creates a “high risk of instability” while raising the spans, the report said.

Bay area officials could build a new cruise-ship portwest of the Skyway Bridge so that the megaships won’t have to travel under the bridge.

That facility would likely be built on Hillsborough County land owned by the Tampa Port Authority, but that would require extensive cooperation from Pinellas County and addressing many environmental issues.

Total estimated cost of the project would be $647 million.

Or the bay area could do nothing. Instead, Port Tampa Bay could become a port of call for older, smaller ships.

In that case, the megaships would find other places to call home.

If the cruise-ship industry were able to continue unimpeded in the Bay Area, according to the report, it could support up to 5,250 jobs by 2038.