August 21, 2024
Provided Image/Lund's Fisheries
The Middle Thorofare Bridge in Cape May County is now fully reopened to traffic after a motor failure on Saturday cause the bridge to close indefinitely. Crews were able to repair the drawbridge after sourcing a specialized part that officials initially thought could take months to obtain.
The Middle Thorofare Bridge that connects Wildwood Crest and Diamond Beach to the mainland was fully reopened to traffic Wednesday morning after engineers worked around the clock to repair its faulty motor. The county's busiest span had been closed since Saturday with its drawbridge stuck upright, and at the time local officials predicted it would take months to complete.
Then that timetable began to rapidly shrink: first from months to weeks when county officials on Tuesday said they had devised a temporary solution; and then to just hours until it was repaired 2 a.m. Wednesday, after crews completed the final tests on the drive-shaft motor, which opens and closes the 85-year-old bridge's deck.
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Cape May County Bridge Commission Director Kevin Lare said luck played a part in getting the bridge fixed so much sooner than expected. An engineering consultant found and ordered a 400-pound auxiliary motor from a vendor in Allentown, along with additional parts that were shipped to the shore overnight Monday from three different parts of the country.
"A lot of dominos fell in our favor," Lare said Wednesday afternoon.
All day Wednesday the bridge has been open to vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The failure on Saturday likely was due to degraded insulation that led to overheating and smoke coming from the motor.
The primary part of the motor that's damaged still needs to be rebuilt and replaced, a process that could take about six months. The repair completed Wednesday morning relied on a workaround using a smaller auxiliary motor connected to the primary motor.
"The only difference is it's less horsepower. It's more of a production motor," Lare explained. "The primary motor is still sitting in place. It's just not functioning. It functions well enough for the gears to spin inside, but it can't create its own power to function."
Before the primary motor failed, a full cycle of opening and closing the Middle Thorofare Bridge took roughly six minutes. With the auxiliary motor now doing most of the work, that takes about nine minutes.
"It's performing better than anticipated," Lare said. "The public wouldn't know the difference. It's negligible."
Lare did not disclose the cost of the auxiliary motor and other replacement parts. Specifications for the custom replacement of the primary motor have been drawn up by consultant Total Control Systems, but county officials don't yet have a cost estimate for the project. The most challenging part will be installing the replacement motor, which will be significantly heavier than the auxiliary motor.
"It will cost more to barge and crane the motor in than it will to have the motor built, most likely," Lare said.
About 560,000 cars crossed the Middle Thorofare Bridge, also called the Two Mile Bridge, last year. It's one of the county's five tolled bridges. In addition to linking several of the shore's most popular summer destinations, the drawbridge gives commercial vessels direct access to New Jersey's largest commercial fishing port.
Initial predictions about the repair timeline stemmed from uncertainty over what would be needed to ensure the bridge could function properly while the new primary motor is manufactured. A lengthy closure would have been disastrous for the county's traffic management and the mariners who rely on access to the port.
"We took a best-case multi-week closure scenario and made a miracle happen," Len Desiderio, Cape May County Commissioner Director and Sea Isle City Mayor, said of the bridge's reopening.
Over the last few days, traffic had been redirected to the George Redding Bridge in Wildwood, the Grassy Sound Bridge in Middle Township and other alternative routes.
Since its construction in 1939, the Middle Thorofare Bridge periodically has needed parts of its motor rebuilt, Lare said. Despite the mechanical issues, the structural integrity of the bridge was never in question.
Still, the Middle Thorofare Bridge is one of the bridges the county plans to replace as part of its master plan to address its aging spans. Of the five tolled bridges, three were built in 1939 (Middle Thorofare, Grassy Sound and Townsends Inlet), one was built in 1949 (Corson's Inlet) and one was built in 2002 (Ocean City-Longport).
The county's Bridge Replacement and Improvement Plan called for work on replacing the Middle Thorofare Bridge to begin last year, but the timelines in that document are only projections. The plan was published in 2022.
"The permits for this project will probably take the better part of two years," Lare said. "There's so many variables. We want to build the bridge. The Board of County Commissioners has been planning and setting aside money for this project for four years now."
The proposed replacement would be a fixed bridge with a higher vertical clearance of 80 feet – compared to the current 23 feet — to enable vessels to pass under it without the need for a drawbridge mechanism. The project is estimated to cost as much as $243 million and likely will require state and federal funding to move forward.
"It's not only the Two Mile Bridge replacement. It's the two flat bridges that lead up to it and then road construction," Lare said. "It's a very large project."
For the time being, Lare said the county is relieved it was able to avoid what appeared would be a lengthy disruption as a result of Saturday's motor failure.
"I went over the bridge today," Lare said. "I was the first car in line for the opening."
