Work to rehabilitate or replace the Bear Cut Bridge on the Rickenbacker Causeway is still a long way from beginning and will cost $60 million to $100 million, a public meeting on the project was told last week.
Until after the current 30-month study is completed in 2027, no decision is expected on whether a taller bridge will be constructed.
While funding for the work would primarily come from the causeway’s own toll revenues, the development team will also be exploring grants over the next four years, to seek grants and bond funding to support bridge redevelopment, if necessary, the April 9 meeting at MAST Academy was told.
The deteriorating bridge is the only link between Key Biscayne and the mainland. How to upgrade or replace it has been debated for more than a decade, since the last major work on the bridge, which was originally built in 1944, several years before Key Biscayne became a residential village.
There is no clear timeline for bridge work after the study is completed, Ryan Fisher, county Department of Transportation and Public Works highway bridge engineering manager, told the meeting. The process needs to be completed before the team can pick an option, design a new higher bridge if that is the chosen alternative, and make all necessary logistical decisions, he said.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado did assure residents, however, that the team could begin going ahead with preliminary designs before the 30-month study process is completed.
The bridge development is a multi-agency partnership among federal, state and county agencies, with the county transportation and public works department working with the Florida Department of Transportation’s Office of Environmental Management, the US Coast Guard, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The county department held the public meeting to tell residents of preliminary findings of the Bear Cut Bridge development study, a necessary phase of the county’s redevelopment plan for the bridge. This redevelopment is part of the Rickenbacker Causeway Master Plan, the county’s initiative to redevelop the entire Rickenbacker Causeway.
The purpose of the Bear Cut Bridge’s planned redevelopment is to “address the structural degradation and substandard design elements” and to “address bridge deficiencies” and to “improve safety,” according to the presentation by the project’s development team.
According to consultant project manager Jeff V. Easley, the bridge’s Project Development and Environment Study is meant to analyze the engineering of the project, the environmental impact, and public involvement on the matter.
Constructed in 1944 as a two-lane bridge, the bridge has been widened in 1983 and again in 2014, and now is 103 feet wide. The bridge has had numerous costly repairs and was the site of 69 crashes over the last six years, with no fatalities but three serious injuries.
The study found that Bear Cut Bridge is home to 30 protected species and habitats, including the loggerhead turtle, the monarch butterfly, the giant manta ray, and the West Indian manatee.
Resilience and sustainability is another goal for the bridge’s development team, to protect against sea level rise and deterioration caused by hurricanes. Concerns over rising sea level projections will have a potential impact on whether the county enhances the old bridge or develops a new one, Mr. Easley said.
The study began in October 2024, so this meeting was held six months into the study. In November, the team is to hold a public meeting to discuss alternatives to developing the bridge, followed by another public hearing in the summer of 2026. The study is anticipated to be completed by April 2027, all told a 30-month study process.
“We do not want to keep surprises from you, and we don’t want surprises from you,” said Mr. Easley.
The last work on the Bear Cut Bridge in 2014 took just over a year, including design on the West and Bear Cut bridges. The project to upgrade the two cost about $32.95 million.
That work included replacement of an old water main that ran along both bridges with about 24-inch-diameter pipes that would increase water pressure for the area, replacement of corroded steel beams in the bridges’ superstructure, and addition of a pedestrians-bicyclists pathway as well as expansion of an existing bike pathway. An 8-foot-wide pathway ran on the south side of the bridge and was expanded to 14 feet. An additional 14-foot-wide pathway was installed on the north side of the bridge. Those pathways were in addition to a pre-existing bicycle lane adjacent to traffic lanes.
Miami-Dade County owns both bridges. It funded the 2014 construction mainly through bonds issued for this project, tolls, and about $3 million from the county’s Water and Sewer Department to replace the water main. Miami-Dade selected Nebraska-based construction and mining company Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. through a competitive solicitation, and the firm worked under a design-build agreement.
The 2014 construction was prompted after inspections by the Florida Department of Transportation and Miami-Dade County found “structural deficiencies” on the Bear Cut and West bridges.
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