Bridge judged 'structurally deficient'

Pensacola Bay Bridge is "structurally deficient" and must be replaced within six years, a transportation official said Wednesday.

"The bridge is safe, there's no problem driving on it," Jim DeVries of the Florida Department of Transportation told members of the Florida-Alabama Transportation Planning Organization at their meeting in Milton.  "But it is a signal that we need to make (bridge replacement) a higher priority."

Pensacola Bay Bridge carries U.S. Highway 98 almost three miles, connecting Gulf Breeze and Pensacola. The state built the bridge, officially the Philip D. Beall Sr. Bridge, in 1960. Area residents commonly refer to the span as the Three-Mile Bridge.

According to FDOT records, the bridge averages 48,428 vehicle trips daily with two lanes northbound and two southbound. Local and state officials began studying bridge replacement or widening in the late 1990s, but bitter disagreement between the cities of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola led to those talks being abandoned.

DeVries said data from those preliminary studies is available and will help jumpstart planning for the required replacement.

"(FDOT) people in Tallahassee are already trying to find sources of funding to get going on this,"  he said.

The term "structurally deficient" means that the department believes a bridge should undergo a series of repairs or replacement within the next six years. The department's policy is to repair or replace all the structurally deficient state owned bridges during that time.