Eye-popping cost to replace Fox Island bridge conjures up tolls, tax hikes

Replacing the aging Fox Island Bridge would cost a staggering $168 million, a study done for Pierce County shows, and it could require island residents to dig deep.

Completely replacing the 67-year-old bridge would take two years, the consulting firm Infrastrategies LLC told the Pierce County Council in a presentation Oct. 17. If construction began in 2025, it could reopen in 2027.

But Fox Island residents might have to contemplate increased property taxes and a hefty bridge toll, even if state and federal funding can be found, the consultants said.

The present bridge, which connects Fox Island to the Gig Harbor Peninsula across Hale Passage, was built in 1954. It was declared “structurally deficient” in 2013 after an underwater inspection found holes several feet deep in the bridge’s concrete footings.

Project would be ‘a struggle’

Funding such an enormous project would be “a struggle,” County Council Chairman Derek Young told The Gateway.

“The county — in fact, no county — is used to building mega-projects like this,” he said. “This would exceed out total budget by a lot.”

For perspective, the Tacoma Dome cost $44 million in 1983, or about $124 million in 2020 dollars. Replacing the Puyallup River Bridge in Tacoma cost only $42 million in 2019.

A new Fox Island bridge would be “several magnitudes above what we normally do,” Young said, not only because of its length — it spans 1,950 feet, or about a third of a mile — but because it crosses tidal saltwater, which introduces lots of construction complications.

Kraig Shaner, the county’s field engineering manager said the $168 million figure assumes the project would happen in 2025 and 2026, and doesn’t account for financing costs or the cost of toll facilities. The total cost for the project ranges from $289 million to $350 million, Shaner said. He said the entire proposed County Road Fund budget for 2022 to 2023 is $179 million.

The county has 219 bridges, ranging from small ones in parks to major roadway river crossings, Shaner said. A small one, like the 110-foot crossing being designed for Glen Cove on the Key Peninsula, costs between $4 million and $5 million to build. A typical river bridge of 300 to 400 feet might cost $50 million, he said.

Small island, big cost

“What makes it more difficult is that a Fox Island bridge would benefit such a small number of people at such great cost,” Young said. That would make a county-wide bond issue a hard sell.

Fox Island has about 3,900 residents. A traffic study done in 2016 showed that about 3,500 people depend on the bridge to commute to the mainland.

Brian Stacy, the county engineer, told The Gateway that several factors would make the project expensive.

“At nearly 2,000 feet, it’s an extremely long bridge, and that’s one factor,” he said. “It’s over water in an environmentally sensitive area, and that’s going to raise regulatory costs. Then there is the cost of acquisition and realignment that comes with building a new structure alongside an existing one.”

Because the project could take up to two years, the old bridge would have to carry traffic for that time, he said.

A new bridge would also be bulkier and bedded deeper than the old one, due to seismic requirements, said Shaner, the field engineering manager. The present bridge’s footings go down only about 12 feet into the gravel. New ones would have to be in shafts drilled 100 feet to bedrock, he explained. That means a lot of heavy equipment would have to be suspended over water, raising the cost.

Back to a ferry?

The presentation the council heard Oct. 17 was the first since a community meeting on the island in 2016. At that time, replacement costs were estimated at $130 million. Inflation and the higher cost of materials account for the difference, the consultants said.

The consultants considered two other options: Rehabilitating the existing bridge or switching to ferry services.

▪ The ferry option was quickly discarded, even though a ferry once ran to the island in the 1940s and ‘50s. A new ferry and terminals at each end would cost even more than replacing the bridge, the consultants found.

▪ Rehabilitating the existing bridge would cost about $79.5 million, would take the same two years to complete, and the bridge would still have to be replaced 15 years later, they estimated.

The consultants laid out several options for funding a new bridge. The one they recommended was “a balanced approach with multiple funding sources,” including state and federal grants, a county-wide bond issue, a tax increase on Fox Island property, and two-way tolls.

Tolls of $4 each way

One option would include a $353 average annual increase for Fox Island property owners (considering an average home value of $750,000) and a toll of $4 each direction until 2055. The tax increase would raise $20.7 million and the tolls would raise $250 million over 29 years. (About $1 million a year would be used for toll operations.)

Other funding could come from state and federal grant programs, but the consultants noted such programs are “highly competitive.” The consultants estimated that $23 million might be raised in that way.

The consulting firm emphasized that all of its recommendations were based on hypotheticals and could change.

How the bridge was funded in the first place is “a bit of a mystery,” Young said, but apparently a state legislator with pull got the island’s road designated a state highway, and also got some of the Narrows Bridge toll diverted to the project. Neither solution would fly today, Young said.

It’s a real conundrum, Young said. While the bridge remains safe to use under the posted load limit, its age leaves it vulnerable to a sudden event like a major earthquake.

“We know that at some point, it’s going to be a sudden problem,” he said. “The question is, what do we do between now and then?”

The county plans to hold a series of public meetings with island residents in the near future, he said.

“We’re not going to force a new bridge on the island,” he said. “If the island doesn’t want to make a change, it’s not going to get a change. It needs to work for them. Our engineers are worried, and eventually this is going to become a big problem. But if they want to go with the status quo, that’s what we’ll do.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.