Work forces Skyway drivers to take turns

Southbound lanes closed, forcing motorists onto northbound lanes, which ran one way south for a time, then swapped.

By MIKE BRASSFIELD
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 22, 2002

The Sunshine Skyway has enough steel cable to stretch from here to New York, and enough concrete to pour a sidewalk from Pensacola to Key West. And still, the 30,000 drivers who cross it every day often take it for granted.

Not Wednesday night. Repair work closed the southbound span of the Skyway overnight, turning the bridge into a bottleneck.

For seven hours, northbound and southbound traffic took turns driving on the remaining span.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers led caravans of cars and big rigs across the span. Troopers made sure the bridge had cleared out before they let cars cross in the opposite direction.

Officials have been warning drivers to take alternate routes if possible, but not everyone had that option.

When the southbound span closed shortly after 10 p.m., drivers coming from the Pinellas County side of the bridge were funnelled into a rest area, where they waited glumly in line.

"I plain forgot they were going to do this," said Lloyd Groves, 53, of Bradenton.

Paul Christman, 31, of St. Petersburg, was one of the first in line. But he wasn't happy about it.

"I was trying to make it across before they shut it down," he said. "Guess I'll have to wait."

An FHP car with its blue lights flashing led the first motorcade across the bridge. As the night wore on, the waiting lines on both sides of the bridge were getting longer.

State officials were unwilling to put two-way traffic on the Skyway's northbound span because it would be unsafe. It's a relatively narrow, 4-mile-long roadway with no barrier between the two lanes, and people drive it at highway speed.

The state is replacing the Skyway's defective expansion joints. The 40,000-pound, 40-foot-wide joints, made of steel and rubber, fit between concrete sections of the bridge and let it expand and contract as temperatures change.

Tonight, the repair work is scheduled to shift to the northbound span, with single lanes closing for several nights. Probably sometime next week, both of the northbound lanes will close on the same night, and northbound and southbound traffic will alternate on the southbound span.

Skyway drivers may have had it rough overnight, but at least they had a bridge. Before the first Skyway opened in 1954, travelers crossed the mouth of Tampa Bay on an hourlong ferry ride.

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