DEL MAR – This could be the year when the fate of the 74-year-old North Torrey Pines Bridge is decided.
CHARLIE NEUMAN / Union-Tribune
In this view looking south, Highway 101 traffic passed over the Del Mar-owned North Torrey Pines Bridge, just south of the city and Carmel Valley Road.
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The structure, a regional transportation asset, will have to be seismically retrofitted to meet current earthquake standards or be demolished and rebuilt from scratch.
The city of Del Mar owns the bridge, but a number of agencies will weigh in on any construction, including the Federal Highway Administration and the California Department of Transportation. The California Coastal Commission also must approve any work, since the bridge is in an ecologically sensitive wetland area south of town.
Construction probably won't begin for several years at least, until after design work is completed and an environmental impact report is finished.
Although Del Mar owns the 553-foot bridge, which links North Torrey Pines Road with Camino Del Mar, the southern half is technically within the city of San Diego.
“The (Del Mar) City Council is on record as favoring retrofitting, even though the cost will be more than building a new bridge,” Mayor Carl Hilliard said.
There is a strong sentiment in town to preserve the structure, he said. Built in 1933, it is an example of a dwindling number of the reinforced-concrete-girder construction typical of the era.
Caltrans declared the bridge structurally deficient in the late 1980s, because it had a high potential for collapsing in a major earthquake onto the railroad tracks below.
Caltrans ordered that it be retrofitted and repaired or rebuilt, but did not set a deadline. Meanwhile, salt air from the nearby ocean continues to attack and corrode the concrete pillars supporting the roadway.
Before the retrofit project can be funded, Del Mar must conduct an environmental study that would include plans for a replacement bridge.
“There's no (environmental impact report) because we don't even have a design proposal for a new bridge yet,” Councilman Dave Druker said. The City Council is waiting for state and federal agencies to say how much funding they would contribute, he said.
A “value analysis study” presented to the council in May 2005 estimated a cost of $19.2 million to retrofit the bridge to make it safe for 25 years, if work started in 2007, and $25.1 million for a 50-year life span.
The study also said building a new, “bare bones” bridge, with a 75-year life span, would cost $11.6 million. Aesthetic enhancements would raise the price.
Design and environmental studies for the project would be about $1.5 million, with the federal and state governments paying the first $400,000 and the city paying 20 percent of everything over that, or about $200,000 to $300,000, said David Scherer, the city's director of public works.
Del Mar needs to raise the money at a time when it is struggling to craft a finance plan to replace the city's older streets and sewers.
Last month, Del Mar completed preliminary work to start the environmental study, and is waiting for a go-ahead from Caltrans to proceed with the actual report, Scherer said.
In theory, the federal government would pay 80 percent of the construction costs of a new bridge or a retrofit, with the state picking up the remainder. But talks continue over how much money the city might have to pay if architectural add-ons exceed comparable work on similar projects, he said.
“Neither the residents nor the California Coastal Commission want to see a plain bridge in place of what we have now,” but beautifying the structure could reduce federal and state funding to about 88 percent, Scherer said.
The City Council will probably take up the matter and settle on a bridge design by summer, Hilliard said.
The North Torrey Pines Bridge predates the city of Del Mar by a quarter-century.
The city of San Diego gave the bridge to Del Mar in 2001, after a disagreement over how to widen the bridge and North Torrey Pines Road south of the span. San Diego wanted three lanes on the bridge – two northbound and one southbound – while Del Mar's general plan called for the bridge deck to remain at two lanes.
The widened North Torrey Pines Road still has two lanes, but with a large median.
James Steinberg: (619) 542-4569; jim.steinberg@uniontrib.com
