Bridge debate should focus on the real issues
For months, almost every issue of the Hub has contained stories and letters, some of the latter very strongly worded, about the plans for replacing the Highlands Bridge. I write to disagree with most of my friends, neighbors and elected officials.

Some say the existing bridge is still safe, but if you walk across it you can see the obvious decay of its steel and concrete. The NJDOT (New Jersey Department of Transportation) has been accused of a plot not to maintain the bridge, but a structure of its age (75 years), especially one with moving parts, incurs rapidly increasing maintenance costs with unsatisfactory results. It is said that the bridge could be completely repaired, but the history of bridges in the U.S. shows that this approach is never technically and economically sound.

It is said that a new bridge, if built, should be movable (another drawbridge or a bascule or swing bridge). Any such bridge must be much more expensive than a fixed one in capital, in maintenance, in operation (for staff to open and close it safely), and in its effects on traffic delays.

The present bridge can be open nearly one-quarter of the time on summer weekends with heavy boat traffic (around seven minutes of every half hour), creating traffic queues well down Ocean Avenue in Sea Bright and as much as 8 miles long coming toward the shore on NJ-36 (though more often, of course, in the range of a mile or two).

The shore traffic, especially on sunny Saturday mornings, will always be very heavy, but the present catastrophic delays would be reduced many-fold by having a fixed bridge.

It is said that the proposed new bridge, with clearance of 65 feet above Mean High Water (which I'm told is the Intra- Coastal Waterway standard) would be too high. One argument is that it would spoil the view of Twin Lights.

This idea seems to me contrived - must every beautiful landmark have nothing out-ofscale built where it can be seen in the same glance? Such a bridge would, however, block some of the ocean view from a dozen houses and several dozen condo units in Highlands, and the angle of view blocked would be substantial for residences south of the bridge.

Another argument, advanced by Mayor Jo-Ann Kalaka-Adams of Sea Bright is that the bridge will be too steep for safety, because black ice will form on its roadway in the winter. I think this argument is correct and important.

A lower bridge has been suggested, perhaps of 55-foot clearance or even less. Since all boats coming out of the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers have to have entered them through this channel, I think a lower bridge should be satisfactory. These rivers are not a continuous part of the ICW. Fifty-five feet at MHW would clear most sailboats of almost 40-foot length, and a little more at low water. A few boaters with high masts would be excluded from our rivers, but not many. Such a bridge would block less of the ocean view and have safer, less steep grades, especially at the Sea Bright end.

The four-lane design of the new bridge has been criticized as part of a plot to make Ocean Avenue four lanes all the way through Sea Bright and maybe Monmouth Beach. I cannot prove that no such plot exists, but four lanes are certainly needed through the business district of Sea Bright, if possible, to separate through traffic from local business and residence traffic.

The present Highlands Bridge has four lanes, in order to separate the traffic streams headed for Sandy Hook and down Ocean Avenue, and to allow a rapid merge onto the bridge from Sandy Hook and from northbound Ocean Ave. This design will remain essential.

A similar accusation has been made about the proposed 40-mile speed limit. The limit is 45 mph approaching the existing bridge on Route 36 South (changing to 30 mph in the middle of the bridge heading east, for the curve leading onto Ocean Ave). The Rumson bridge, which also has four lanes, has a 40-mph limit even though it ends at a traffic light! These speed limits, approaching the bridges from the west, seem high to me but are not a new idea.

In summary, the only arguments against the present plan that seem well-founded to me are the steepness of the east side of the new bridge, with its slipperiness in winter, and the blocking of part of the view of the ocean from many houses facing east on the bluff below Twin Lights. Both these problems could be ameliorated by building a lower fixed bridge.

I wish that public protests would focus on the issue of bridge height instead of on the others.

Eric Wolman

Sea Bright