The Garcon Point Bridge is a 2-lane toll bridge in

Santa Rosa County Santa Rosa County is a county located in the northwestern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2020, the population is 188,000. The county seat is Milton, which lies in the geographic center of the county. Other major communities within S ...

, in the

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

panhandle A salient (also known as a panhandle or bootheel) is an elongated protrusion of a geopolitical entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state. While similar to a peninsula in shape, a salient is most often not surrounded by water on ...

. The bridge generally runs north - south and connects

U.S. Route 98 U.S. Route 98 (US 98) is an east–west United States Highway in the Southeastern United States that runs from western Mississippi to southern Florida. It was established in 1933 as a route between Pensacola and Apalachicola, Florida, and has sinc ...

east of

Gulf Breeze, Florida Gulf Breeze is a city in Santa Rosa County, Florida. It is a suburb of Pensacola, and is in the Pensacola Metropolitan Area. The population estimate was 6,900 in 2020. Gulf Breeze is located just north of Pensacola Beach, and south of Pensaco ...

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally pl ...

and U.S. Route 90 west of

Milton, Florida Milton is a city in and the county seat of Santa Rosa County, Florida, located in the Pensacola– Ferry Pass– Brent Metropolitan Statistical Area, also known as the Pensacola Metropolitan Area. Milton is located in the geographic center ...

. The road and bridge uses the TOLL 281 shield on signage from US 98 to I-10. North of I-10 the road is signed solely as State Road 281. Exit signs on I-10 display both the State Road 281 and TOLL 281 shields. The bridge crosses East Bay, a large section of Pensacola Bay and serves as an evacuation route during hurricanes.

History

Due to the reputation of being a pet project of former Florida House Speaker Bolley "Bo" Johnson, D-Milton, who later went to federal prison for tax evasion, the bridge project was nicknamed "Bo's Bridge". It was completed in 1999 and in 2000, the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority asked for an $500,000 loan from the state despite having to delay paying back previous multimillion-dollar loans from the state.Pittman, Craig.
"Flawed figures leaves toll roads running flat"
St. Petersburg Times 16 Jul 2000. Retrieved 4 May 2010 The loan was later denied in 2001. In 1996, URS Greiner Woodward Clyde, a consulting firm, made traffic volume projections based on the assumption that the Garcon Point Bridge would have traffic similar to a nearby bridge to Destin, a popular beach resort instead of the subdivisions that it actually connects. In 2000, the average daily traffic was only 3500 vehicles a day, far from the 7500 that URS projected. In 2000, Arthur Goldberg, the URS vice president who wrote the estimates for the Garcon Point Bridge, told the ''St. Petersburg Times'', "We now know that e were wrong about the estimates I don't think the Garcon Point Bridge will ever get back to the forecast we made for it in 1996." Odebrecht-Metric, the construction company who built the bridge, illegally dumped construction waste during the project, resulting in a $4 million fine for the company for violating the federal Clean Water Act. Three supervisors pleaded guilty and paid $1,000 in fines and served a probation.

Toll

There is one toll plaza at the north end of the bridge. Tolls may be paid with cash or with the

SunPass SunPass is an electronic toll collection system within the state of Florida, United States. It was created in 1999 by the Florida Department of Transportation's (FDOT's) Office of Toll Operations, operating now as a division of Florida's Turnpik ...

electronic toll system. From December 2019 to June 15, 2022, the one-way cost for the toll for a 2-axle vehicle was $5.00. SunPass users who cross the bridge 30 times per month receive a discount for the toll cost. In November, 2014, the trustees of the bridge project proposed raising the bridge toll to $5 each way and reducing the discount given to frequent users. On December 4th 2019, a State judge ruled that the bridge bond holders, UMB Bank, could increase the toll from the current rate of $3.75 per vehicle to $5 per vehicle. On September 17th, 2020, Governor Ron DeSantis has suspended tolls on the Garcon Point Bridge, as it is the primary alternate route for the

Hurricane Sally Hurricane Sally was a destructive and slow-moving Atlantic hurricane, which was the first hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. state of Alabama since Ivan in 2004, coincidentally on the same date in the same place. The eighteenth named storm, ...

-damaged Pensacola Bay Bridge. The repairs to that bridge were complete enough to allow traffic to return to the bridge on May 28, 2021. It later returned to having four lanes of traffic. In June 2022, FDOT bought the bridge. The tolls were lowered to $2.30 for SunPass customers and $2.75 for cash users on June 16, 2022.

References

External links

Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority
* ttp://www.garconpointbridge.com/project.htm Garcon Point Bridge Site {{Bridges of Florida Toll bridges in Florida Bridges completed in 1999 Road bridges in Florida Concrete bridges in the United States Box girder bridges in the United States Transportation buildings and structures in Santa Rosa County, Florida 1999 establishments in Florida

History

Toll

See also

References

External links