Crossing the Bridge: Door County EMS and the Bridge Closure

Dick Burress and Arleigh Porter have been around long enough to remember when Sturgeon Bay was a one-bridge town, so the planned closure of the Bayview Bridge next spring doesn’t put them on edge.

But Burress, Director of Emergency Services for Door County, and Porter, the Sturgeon Bay Police Chief, recognize that the closure will present a special set of challenges.

“Our biggest concern is going to be getting south,” Burress said. “Sixty to seventy percent of our city runs are on the east side, so we’re probably in one of the best locations possible.”

Burress said that getting to the patient is a bigger concern than the speed getting a patient to the hospital. Right now the time it takes to go through downtown is comparable to going over the Bayview Bridge, Burress said, but that will change when traffic is detoured into the city. He’s also concerned about extended bridge openings for freighters and the regular openings on the half hour.

“It’s going to be a very interesting problem,” he said. “It’s been more than 30 years since we had to think about this.”

They’re thinking about it again because the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) has scheduled work on the 33-year-old Bayview Bridge for next April. The project will cost between $4 million and $6 million and includes re-decking the bridge and installing remote operations for the city’s three bridges. The bridge will be completely closed through June of 2012.

That means the 12,000 to 17,000 vehicles that cross the bridge (split almost dead even between northbound and southbound traffic) every day will be re-routed into the city.

Porter said emergency response time within downtown shouldn’t be affected. The city stations officers on both the east and west side of the canal, but it could pose challenges getting to areas on County U near the Bayview Bridge.

“We’ll adapt, we have to,” he said. “I just hope our local folks adjust their driving habits accordingly. There will be a bit of a pain factor here, and there’s a potential for more accidents. We’ll be taking people who have driven for hours on a four-lane highway and exiting them onto one-lane city streets with congestion.”

But Porter also pointed out that Sturgeon Bay is very fortunate to have three bridges in a community of its size. The Michigan Street Bridge and the Maple to Oregon Street Bridge will both remain open during the construction.

“We have it pretty good,” he said. “Dick and I are both old enough to remember the challenges we faced when we only had the Michigan Street Bridge. When the Bayview Bridge opened it really helped our response time.”

Burress said they will review their bridge closure contingency plans and possibly make some changes to prepare for the Bayview closure. One possibility would be to set up a second ambulance crew on the west side at the fire station.

Emergency services aren’t the only ones who will have to adjust. City Engineer Tony Depies expects to be presented with the DOT’s impact analysis sometime this fall. He anticipates that one proposal will be to detour southbound traffic down Egg Harbor Road and onto Third Avenue.

Northbound traffic could then be detoured onto Michigan Street, funneling vehicles back onto Highway 42/57 by the Door County YMCA. In anticipation of that, the city is widening Michigan Street and adding curb and gutter to the road.

If that is the plan it could send approximately 8,000 more vehicles per day through the middle of the Sturgeon Bay School Campus. One thousand students populate the campus every day in April and May, and keeping them safe will take careful planning, said Sturgeon Bay Schools Superintendent Joe Stutting.

“The biggest thing is after school in the spring, when all our kids in sports will be crossing Michigan Street to get to the athletic fields,” he said. “We have two stop signs there already with center warning signs, but not every kid walks through the crosswalk.”

Stutting, who also sits on the Sturgeon Bay Common Council, said the city and the school will be looking at all avenues of student safety and will consider adding more crossing guards. He also said he wouldn’t be surprised if the business community lobbies to have northbound traffic routed down Third Avenue and onto Egg Harbor Road instead.

“I’m just glad we’re starting to think about this already, rather than getting hit with it next spring and trying to react to a situation,” Stutting said.