news-record.com

Driving across the I-85 bridge spanning the Yadkin River can be a white-knuckle adventure, particularly if the family car is sandwiched between bumper-hugging eighteen-wheelers.

The absence of shoulders on the 54-year-old bridge with two heavily traveled lanes in each direction connecting Davidson and Rowan counties leaves no margin for error in emergencies.

Although the structure is considered safe for now, inspectors say it is deficient and deteriorating. There's no question that the antiquated span should be replaced as soon as possible. The stumbling block, however, is the estimated $300 million price tag.

And while time passes, the bill continues to escalate. In 1990, the state Department of Transportation said building a new bridge and widening its approach would cost $70 million. By 2004, that had mushroomed to $150 million. Further delays only serve to inflate the staggering numbers.

Help could be on the way through President-elect Barack Obama's proposed public works stimulus package. Yet that may not happen unless DOT changes how it divvies up the money.

As it stands, an equity formula calls for spreading the largess throughout the state, with no single project getting a disproportionately large slice of the pie. That may be the politically expedient thing to do, but it disregards the greatest needs and could even endanger public safety. Such a short-sighted policy ought to be rewritten.

A near-capacity 80,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily. Even routine maintenance such as filling potholes results in what traffic engineers call "the mother of all traffic jams."

Of the funding options, the hoped-for Obama stimulus package emerges as the best choice. Others, like former U.S. senator and Salisbury resident Elizabeth Dole's effort to land a congressional earmark, have failed.

And raising money for road and bridge repairs through a statewide bond vote later this year seems unlikely, given the precarious economy.

Finally, the state's 21st Century Transportation Committee's proposal for a toll bridge has so angered local residents, who complain they'd pay a disproportionately high percentage of the project's costs, that it won't gain traction either.

It's time for the state to put aside parochial interests and use a substantial share of the expected federal public works money to erect a safe, modern bridge that accommodates 21st century traffic and finally raze the old one. Gov. Bev. Perdue favors that option.

Interstate 85 is the lifeline connecting Charlotte with the Triad, Triangle and points east. It won't come cheap, but replacing the Yadkin River bridge will make the journey down I-85 both safer and less nerve-racking.