Posted on December 11, 2024
As Marylanders review state transportation officials’ proposal to demolish the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and replace the historic structures with new, wider spans, preferences for structures that would include eight travel lanes are emerging. After years of evaluating how to alleviate traffic congestion on the four-mile-long bridge, the Maryland Transportation Authority is proposing to knock down the aging structures and build new ones in roughly the same area. What exactly the new bridges will look like has yet to be decided. Six options are being considered, all of which would have more lanes than the current bridges. Four options would have two new structures containing a total of eight lanes, while two would have 10 lanes crossing the bay.
The MDTA is still evaluating a no-build option as well, but not building a new bridge would be costly — keeping up with work on the two aging bridge spans is estimated to cost $3.8 billion through 2065. In comparison, the MDTA estimates building a new eight-lane bridge would cost $7.3 billion. A 10-lane bridge is estimated to cost $8.4 billion.
