One of the Panther Island bridges in downtown Fort Worth is behind schedule, again
The bridge needed to connect White Settlement Road to what eventually will be Fort Worth’s Panther Island is behind schedule, again, this time by a few weeks.
It may open by mid-March, Doug Rademaker, a senior project manager for the city, said Tuesday.
The bridge was first scheduled to open to traffic in 2017, along with two others, but design issues pushed completion back two years. Then in 2019, project officials said the White Settlement bridge would be finished by late summer 2020, but the date was pushed back again to the end of last year. COVID-19 and construction delays pushed the date into 2021, and a Tarrant Regional Water District spokesperson in December confirmed board members were told traffic would flow in February.
The Texas Department of Transportation, which is overseeing construction, believes the bridge will open in “early spring,” Rademaker said. Based on the amount of work left, he told the Trinity River Vision Authority board he expects traffic to cross the White Settlement Road bridge within the first two weeks of March.
“Bridges for White Settlement, North Main and Henderson are being built over dry land for a cost of nearly $90 million. The three bridges are needed to connect downtown to the planned Panther Island, an 800-acre island in the Trinity River that would be formed after a bypass channel is cut between the two forks. The $1.17 billion project has languished without federal financial support for years.
Bridges for North Main Street and Henderson Street should follow quickly, Rademaker said. North Main may be usable by Mid-April with Henderson opening in the summer.
The North Main bridge is capable of supporting a trolley, a feature that confused Panther Island board members David Cooke, the city manager, and James Hill, a water district board member. Both were interested in understanding if the bridge costs more and why such a feature was included when there is no trolley.
When construction for the bridges was bid on, roughly a decade ago, a trolley connecting downtown to the Stockyards was discussed as a possible future transit option, Tarrant County Administrator G.K. Maenius said.
In late 2010 the Fort Worth City Council voted to reject $25 million in federal funding to place a streetcar. The project required local money and would have included three miles of track connecting downtown to Near Southside and Panther Island. In 2018, KXAS Channel 5 reported the water district spent about $50,000 studying the use of trolleys on the island.
Rademaker said he wasn’t sure what the North Main Bridge would have cost without sections designed to hold a streetcar. There is not track on the bridge. Concrete has been poured so that if the city wanted to run a trolley, a new bridge would not bee needed, he said.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 6:04 PM.
