The Middle Thorofare Bridge, which connects Wildwood Crest and Diamond Beach to the mainland, was fully reopened to traffic Wednesday morning after engineers worked around the clock to repair the broken motor. The county’s busiest bridge had been closed since Saturday because the drawbridge was stuck. At the time, local authorities predicted it would take months to complete.
Then the timeline began to rapidly shrink: First it went from months to weeks, when county officials said Tuesday they had found a temporary solution; and then it was just hours before the repair was completed at 2 a.m. Wednesday, after crews completed final tests on the driveshaft motor that opens and closes the deck of the 85-year-old bridge.
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Kevin Lare, director of the Cape May County Bridge Commission, said luck played a role in the bridge being repaired so much faster than expected. An engineering consultant found and ordered a 400-pound auxiliary motor from an Allentown dealer and other parts that were shipped to the coast Monday night from three different parts of the country.
“Many dominoes have fallen in our favor,” Lare said Wednesday afternoon.
The bridge was open to car, pedestrian and bicycle traffic all day on Wednesday. Saturday’s outage was likely due to damaged insulation, which caused the engine to overheat and smoke.
The damaged main section of the engine still needs to be repaired and replaced, a process that could take about six months. The repair, completed on Wednesday morning, was based on a makeshift solution that involved attaching a smaller auxiliary engine to the main engine.
“The only difference is it has less horsepower. It’s more of a stock engine,” Lare explained. “The main motor is still in place. It just doesn’t work. It works well enough to keep the gears in it turning, but it can’t generate its own power to function.”
Before the main engine failed, a full opening and closing cycle of the Middle Thorofare Bridge took about six minutes. With the auxiliary engine now doing most of the work, this cycle takes about nine minutes.
“The performance is better than expected,” Lare said. “The public would not notice the difference. It is negligible.”
Lare did not disclose the cost of the auxiliary engine and other replacement parts. Specifications for the custom replacement of the main engine were prepared by consulting firm Total Control Systems, but county officials do not yet have a cost estimate for the project. The most difficult part will be installing the replacement engine, which will be significantly heavier than the auxiliary engine.
“It will most likely cost more to bring the engine in by ship and crane than to have it built,” Lare said.
Last year, approximately 560,000 cars crossed the Middle Thorofare Bridge, also known as the Two Mile Bridge. It is one of the county’s five toll bridges. The drawbridge not only connects some of the most popular summer destinations on the coast, but also provides commercial vessels with direct access to New Jersey’s largest commercial fishing port.
Initial predictions of the repair schedule were based on uncertainty about what would be needed to ensure the bridge functioned properly while the new main engine was being manufactured. A prolonged closure would have been devastating to the county’s traffic management and mariners who rely on port access.
“We took the best-case scenario of a multi-week closure and made a miracle happen,” said Len Desiderio, director of the Cape May County Commissioner and mayor of Sea Isle City, about the bridge’s reopening.
In recent days, traffic has been diverted to the George Redding Bridge in Wildwood, the Grassy Sound Bridge in Middle Township and other alternate routes.
Since its construction in 1939, parts of the Middle Thorofare Bridge’s engine have required periodic replacement, Lare said. Despite the mechanical problems, the bridge’s structural integrity has never been in question.
However, the Middle Thorofare Bridge is one of the bridges the county plans to replace as part of its master plan to address aging bridges. Of the five toll bridges, three were built in 1939 (Middle Thorofare, Grassy Sound and Townsends Inlet), one in 1949 (Corson’s Inlet) and one in 2002 (Ocean City-Longport).
The county’s Bridge Replacement and Improvement Plan called for work to begin replacing the Middle Thorofare Bridge last year, but the timelines in that document are only projections. The plan was released in 2022.
“The permits for this project will probably take close to two years,” Lare said. “There are so many variables. We want to build the bridge. The Board of County Commissioners has been planning and setting aside money for this project for four years.”
The proposed replacement would be a fixed bridge with a higher clearance of 80 feet (compared to the current 23 feet) to allow ships to pass underneath without a drawbridge mechanism. The project is estimated to cost up to $243 million and will likely require state and federal funding to move forward.
“It’s not just about replacing the Two Mile Bridge. It’s also about the two flat bridges that lead to it and then the road construction,” Lare said. “It’s a very big project.”
Lare said the district was relieved for now that it had managed to avoid what appeared to be a lengthy disruption as a result of Saturday’s engine failure.
“I drove across the bridge today,” said Lare. “I was the first car in line for the opening.”
