Cunningham Bridge set to open on Friday

After nearly three years of work to replace it, the new $41 million Alfred P. Cunningham Bridge will open to traffic by Friday afternoon.

“We are shooting for between 11 (a.m.) and noon,” said Johnny Metcalfe, resident engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation.

A major artery in downtown New Bern, the bridge has been inaccessible to drivers since May 2007, when work to replace the 1950s version of it began. Between then and now, downtown travelers — and merchants — have had to weather both the closure of the bridge and the major remodeling of Broad Street.

“We will be pleased to open the bridge to the public,” Metcalfe said Monday. “We did our pre-final walk-through in the driving rain … and we’ll do our final walk-through Wednesday. We will look at the bridge from every vantage point and will take it through several cycles where we are looking at every safety mechanism to make sure it works.”

Among the items that get tested are the traffic gates and the locks that keep the bridge stabilized when cars are on top of it. Crews will also be “striping” the bridge Wednesday, and by Friday morning, some downtown merchants will get a tour of the bridge. By afternoon, the traffic signals will be ready and the barricades will be down.

“We are really excited and we think that what they should do is take the money that they are going to spend on the (Monday) ceremony and put it into downtown and just open the (expletive) bridge,” said Tom Ballance, a restaurateur on Middle Street. “We will be really disappointed if they don’t open the bridge at 11 a.m. Friday. If they don’t, I’ll knock down barricades myself and just let them put me in jail.”

The city has an estimated $116,000 one-year contract with Liberty Support Services in Raleigh, and the company will do the day-to-day operations of the bridge and the “greasing” maintenance of it. That price also includes general liability insurance in case anything goes wrong because of the bridge tenders, said Fire Chief Bobby Aster, the city’s point man on finishing out the bridge project.

The tending crew is made up of local workers, several of whom are military veterans, said Mike Hartley, whose wife Carol owns the Raleigh company. Liberty Support Services runs several other North Carolina bridges, including the Onslow Beach Bridge and the Alligator River Bridge (in Tyrrell County).

The opening ceremony for the bridge is still set for Monday at 11 a.m., and will include several dignitaries, among them Gov. Bev Perdue and Mayor Lee Bettis.

Nikie Mayo can be reached at 252-635-5665 or nmayo@freedomenc.com.