Work on a bike and pedestrian pathway under the Heide Trask Drawbridge will begin in the coming weeks and Wilmington city officials expect the project to be completed before the finish of tourist season.
The pathway is part of the Gary Shell Cross-City Trail, which will be finished this year, and much of the remaining work targets the final stretch of the trail near Wrightsville Beach.
Among the planned pedestrian and cycling improvements are crosswalks at the busy intersection of Wrightsville Avenue and Eastwood Road and a multi-use path under the mainland side of the Heide Trask Drawbridge.
Plans for the pathway under the bridge were released last year, but March 1 the Wilmington City Council approved a $649,050 contract with Intracoastal Marine, LLC to build it.
“Our goal is to be done, and out of there, before the heart of tourist season,” said Wilmington Parks and Recreation Superintendent Amy Beatty.
The 8-foot-wide path will be concrete over land and boardwalk over water. It will start near the intersection of Airlie Road and Wrightsville Avenue, pass under the drawbridge as an open-slat timber boardwalk, and connect to the cross-city trail on the north side of Wrightsville Avenue.
Plans also indicate the pathway will be lit at night and include an octagonal gazebo on the north side.
The pathway will give those traveling the cross-city trail a safe path to the other side of Eastwood Road, allowing them to access the businesses and restaurants on Airlie Road. It will also facilitate safer pedestrian and cyclist traffic flow for those traveling to and from the beach by eliminating opposing traffic on the drawbridge’s north side.
The new pathway will put those traveling east on the bridge’s southern side and those traveling west on its northern side, Beatty said, explaining that currently “you’ve got all the pedestrians and cyclists on the same side of the bridge on a fairly narrow sidewalk traveling in both directions.”
The pathway must extend into the Intracoastal Waterway in order to obtain necessary vertical clearance between the path and the underside of the drawbridge. In order to ensure minimal impact on that environment, the city received a Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) major permit and permission from the Federal Highway Administration.
The project will be mostly funded by a $560,000 transportation grant the city received in 2013. Beatty does not anticipate any significant impacts to boat or vehicular traffic during construction.
Several crosswalks and another stretch of multi-use path will further improve safety just west of the drawbridge near the intersection of Eastwood Road and Wrightsville Avenue. A crosswalk will connect the end of the bike lane on Wrightsville Avenue near Harris Teeter to a multi-use path to be constructed on the opposite side of the street, and several more crosswalks with signal heads will span Wrightsville Avenue, Canal Drive and Eastwood Road intersection.
Beatty said construction of those crosswalks should begin this week. The final gap in the cross-city trail, near Randall Drive and Kerr Avenue, is currently being completed as part of an ongoing project to widen Kerr Avenue.
The entire 15-mile trail, from Wade Park to Wrightsville Beach, will be done by the end of this year, Beatty confirmed.
“We know that there is a tremendous amount of cycling activity…and people enjoy getting to the beach that way, so we’re trying to make it as safe as possible for them to do that,” she said.
Another project to improve biking over the drawbridge to the beach will be underway this fall. The North Carolina Department of Transportation will install lightweight steel plates over the drawbridge’s metal grids. The plates will be 30 inches wide and coated with a non-skid material.
Cyclists have expressed concerns about the safety of biking over the metal grids, especially after a rainstorm.
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