What will it cost to replace this major Pierce County bridge? The study alone is $1.8M
Construction won’t start for a while, but a $1.8 million study is underway to replace Pierce County’s structurally-deficient Fox Island Bridge.
The county doesn’t have a cost estimate yet for the actual replacement, but an analysis five years ago put the price tag at more than $168 million.
Now, the county has to figure out how to fund it.
Pierce County spokesperson Danielle Winski said the type, size, and location (TS&L) study that’s underway will present final cost estimates, funding options and replacement options for the bridge. It started earlier this year and will go until late 2025, according to Pierce County’s website for the project.
Winski confirmed that the $1.8 million for the TS&L study, which is listed among other projects in the county’s 2024-2029 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), was approved as part of the county’s 2024-25 biennial budget.
The most recent project timeline indicates the county doesn’t expect construction to begin before 2026. Winski wrote in an email to The News Tribune that there isn’t a start date yet.
County inspections in recent years, including 2023, found the bridge doesn’t meet current seismic and accessibility standards. It was built based on design standards from over 70 years ago and has narrow lanes, no shoulders and no space for bikes and sidewalks, and it isn’t accessible under the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act, according to the project website.
The bridge was built in 1954, at a time when bridges were typically built to last 50 years, according to a Q&A the county hosted in 2022. Now, bridges typically last 75 years, according to Winski.
The News Tribune reported in 2021 that an underwater inspection in 2013 found holes several feet deep in the Fox Island Bridge’s concrete footings. Other structural deficiencies have limited the load-carrying capacity of the bridge, the deck has shown signs of wearing down and cracks have been observed in concrete elements of the bridge, according to an analysis done in 2016.
Crews recently repaired the supporting girders at Piers 17 and 20, which are on the Gig Harbor side of the bridge, beginning in March of this year. That project was entirely funded through the County Road Fund, which is part of the county’s budget dedicated to building and maintaining public roads, bridges, traffic signals and other transportation expenses.
What will the TS&L study entail?
The TS&L study will investigate options for the new bridge and its potential structure, size and alignment on the Gig Harbor and Fox Island shorelines and across Hale Passage. It will also evaluate impacts to the environment, marine vessel traffic, bridge users and nearby residents, among other factors, to come up with a final recommendation to submit to the Federal Highway Administration, according to the project website. Consultant HDR has been chosen to lead the study, and Pierce County is managing and overseeing their work, according to Winski.
The study builds on a preliminary study beginning in 2016 that identified options to replace, retrofit and rehabilitate the bridge. This phase will focus on options to replace the bridge.
Getting the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the TS&L study is necessary to build the new bridge, after getting the proper environmental permits and right-of-way acquisitions, according to information in an online open house about the project that was available from July 22 to Aug. 11. The TS&L study is also required to become eligible for federal funding.
The same information was available at an in-person open house held at Artondale Elementary Aug. 1 along with opportunities to talk with engineers working on the project, as announced on the Pierce County Planning & Public Works Facebook page.
There will be two more in-person open houses in the coming months for residents to hear updates and submit feedback to the county, according to the county website.
Dates and locations are to be determined, but the second open house is planned for late 2024 to early 2025 and the third is planned for late 2025, according to Winski. Announcements about the future open houses will be shared to the project email list, on social media, and on postcard invitations sent to Fox Island residents and residents near the Gig Harbor side of the bridge.
Residents submitted feedback about the Aug. 1 open house and potential bridge features such as bike lanes and pedestrian walkways via an online survey that was available until Aug. 11.
The feedback will help shape the recommended design identified in the TS&L study and confirmed by Pierce County staff before it is included in a future Transportation Improvement Program, according to Winski. The Transportation Improvement Program is a six-year plan listing transportation improvement projects that the Pierce County Council must review and approve annually.
Boat owners who have or use their vessels within a 20-mile radius of the Fox Island Bridge were also invited to fill out a survey about the dimensions of their boats and their use of the channel below the existing bridge. The vessel survey will close in about six weeks, according to Winski.
What funding options is the county looking into?
Pierce County can’t afford to replace the bridge at this time, according to the project website. The TS&L study will analyze different funding options including money from the state and federal government, tolling and bonds, the website says.
A 2019 study commissioned by Pierce County from InfraStrategies LLC projected a total cost of $168.1 million, adjusted for inflation in 2026, to replace the bridge if it was built over 2025-2026.
To rehabilitate or retrofit the existing bridge would cost more because the bridge would still need to be replaced at some point in the future, the 2019 study said. Without adjusting for inflation and using 2016 dollars, the cost to rehabilitate and retrofit the bridge now but replace it later on would cost $172 million, as opposed to $127 million for a one-and-done replacement, according to the 2019 study.
That financial study was completed before the TS&L study to help the county compare those costs.
The News Tribune previously reported that some Fox Island residents have pushed the county for a safer bridge, but some worry about how much they’ll have to pay for it.
Heidi Alessi, a Fox Island resident since 2018 and an admin for the community Facebook group “Fox Island Bridge Discussions,” told The News Tribune she has heard other island residents share concerns about how much of the bridge they’ll have to pay for through property taxes and tolls.
The county is considering a range of options to fund the bridge, as indicated by the 2019 financial analysis. Besides bridge tolls or increasing property taxes for island residents, other options could include contributions from the County Road Fund and competitive grant funds at the federal, state and local level.
Raising property taxes would require creating either a road improvement district or a transportation benefit district, which are types of local improvement districts (LIDs). A LID allows local governments to impose property taxes on residents within the boundaries of the district to pay for projects that will primarily benefit those same residents, according to the Municipal Research and Services Center.
Alessi said she hopes the county will treat Fox Island residents fairly as they consider how to pay for the bridge, and thinks there’s misconceptions about the financial situations of people on the island.
“I think there’s an unfair stereotype that Fox Island is full of just rich people in mansions on the waterfront,” she said. “That’s not a fair characterization at all. Like any community, we have people in a range of positions. We have retirees on fixed incomes. We have young families struggling to make ends meet.”
Fox Island has a population of about 3,644 and covers about 5.2 square miles, according to U.S. Census data from 2022 published via Census Reporter. That’s 701.6 people per square mile. The median per capita income is $84,382 and the median household income is $157,566. 1.5% of the population lives below the poverty line.
For comparison, the median household income in all of Pierce County in 2022 was about $93,400, according to the county. In Tacoma, the median household income is $80,784 and 14.2% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the 2022 Census Reporter data.
Kraig Shaner, Pierce County’s field engineering manager, said that “everything’s on the table” with regard to funding options the county is considering. Grant funds are one of the potential sources still up in the air.
“A lot of those funding sources are very competitive with other agencies,” Shaner said. “And we may or may not compete well, depending on the criteria of any given grant. So we kind of look at what the criteria is and go: ‘We can be competitive for that one, we’ll go after that one.’”
John Ohlson, a Fox Island resident since 1988 who built his own house on the island, told The News Tribune at the in-person open house that he believes some Fox Island residents think it would be unfair to pay higher taxes for the bridge replacement. They point to other county road projects that have been funded without turning to this option, he said. Ohlson is an admin of the Fox Island News Facebook page.
The county compared the Fox Island bridge replacement project to other road projects in a community Q&A published in 2022.
“Many other repair and replacement projects have been completed without tolling or taxing specific travelers but no single project of this magnitude. Although the Fox Island Bridge was initially a toll road when it was built by the Washington Toll Bridge Authority in 1954 and up until 1965, Pierce County road projects have historically been funded through a combination of property taxes, fuel taxes, real estate excise taxes, development impact fees, grants, and sometimes bonds or loans,” the Q&A sheet said.
Fox Island resident Paul Christensen told The News Tribune at the open house that the bridge is a special place to him.
“Every time I cross the bridge, I look at it and I just go: ‘This is so awesome,’” Christensen said. “You know, to look at the Olympics on one side and the Cascades on the other and you see Mount Rainier almost every time you cross, and it’s extremely scenic.”
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 1:21 PM.
