Beverly Bridge Closure Impact A Hot Topic At Community Forum

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly residents will look for updates and more answers Tuesday when Mayor Mike Cahill and other local officials hold a community meeting to discuss the closed Hall-Whitaker drawbridge and plan to replace the Kernwood Bridge.

The meeting will be held in person at the Ayers-Ryal Side School at 7 p.m.

Many Beverly residents were left aghast three weeks ago when state Department of Transportation officials laid out 13 years of expected bridge work, closures and detours ahead to fix the Hall-Whitaker and deficient Kernwood Bridge.

Officials said it would be 2026 before a temporary replacement for the months-closed Hall-Whitaker Bridge could be completed, 2031 before the "poor condition" Kernwood Bridge can be repaired and replaced, and 2035 before a permanent Hall-Whitaker bridge replacement will be in place.

"When they came to us with the projected calendar, of needing one or the other of the Hall-Whitaker or Kernwood closed really at all times for the next 13 years," said Cahill at that Oct. 11 public forum, "none of us liked that. So that has us all going back to square one and questioning everything again."

State transportation officials said the biggest obstacles to a quicker timeline are federal environmental permitting obstacles — which include the presence of "spawning fish," according to state Chief Engineer Carrie Lavallee — that will take between 18 and 24 months, and other right-of-way permitting guidelines, that will not allow for construction on even the temporary Hall-Whitaker Bridge to even begin until 2024.

Several residents spoke at the Oct. 11 meeting about concerns regarding neighborhood traffic from the detours and lag time in emergency response because of the closed routes.

A state master plan had scheduled the Kernwood Bridge to be replaced starting in 2027, but that timeline assumed the Hall-Whitaker Bridge would remain functional beyond that. In June, the Hall-Whitaker was deemed beyond structurally deficient to "unsafe" — and it was soon closed to all but pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)