The Mid-Currituck Bridge Clears a Significant Hurdle
Before the pandemic popped up on the world in 2020, progress was being made on the mid-Currituck bridge project. It will be a 7 mile project with a 4.7 mile toll bridge connecting Corolla, NC to the mainland in Currituck County. This bridge will save travelers a ton of time on "turn days" (typically Saturdays and Sundays) when one group of guests checks out of a vacation rental, and another group checks in. For people driving from the northeast especially, this could cut as many as 2 hours off the drive to a beach house in Corolla.
Avoiding the traffic in Duck/Southern Shores has long been a goal of Corolla visitors, and there was a large contingent that fought to make the toll bridge a reality. Prior to Covid, the NC Dept of Transportation was getting closer to breaking ground on the project. Most of the environmental study work and the Record of Decision was out of the way. But after the beach closed to visitors in spring of 2020, the NC DOT decided to put the bridge project on hold. In doing so, it allowed an opening for environmental groups to challenge the project again in court.
After a lawsuit was filed in 2019, the federal/state transportation groups had to win a challenge that their environmental study needed to be done again. One court sided with the transportation groups in 2021, and just a few days ago an appeals court upheld that ruling in their favor. This essentially puts the project back on track with no further environmental studies needed, and once funding is directed to the project, they can break ground and start building the bridge.
You can read more on this story here:
And you can find the entire Mid-Currituck bridge project on the NC DOT site here:
https://www.ncdot.gov/projects/mid-currituck-bridge/Pages/default.aspx
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