Since construction started on the new pedestrian bridge, getting to Canal Road has meant threading through somebody’s neighborhood. Gulf Shores just made the move that ends that.
The Gulf Shores City Council unanimously approved a land exchange with Gulf State Park at its July 13 meeting — a deal that hands the city the right-of-way it needs to build a permanent bypass road connecting the new bridge directly to Highway 59.
Two Years of a Toll-Free Bridge
The push for a better-balanced route to the coast did not start with this land deal. Since the Alabama Department of Transportation purchased the Beach Express bridge and removed its tolls in May 2024, traffic patterns heading into Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have already shifted noticeably. For years, Highway 59 had served as the primary, and often only, route for beachgoers and commuters alike, a corridor plagued by frequent traffic signals and restrictive speed limits that could turn a short trip into an hour of stop-and-go traffic, especially during peak summer weekends and holidays. Removing the toll gave travelers a genuine alternative, easing some of that single-route bottleneck for the first time in years.
The newly built Intracoastal Waterway bridge has added to that shift, featuring two dedicated southbound lanes that improve mobility and help reduce congestion during the busiest travel periods. Combined with the toll-free Beach Express, the new bridge has given travelers real options for the first time in a route that had long relied on a single overburdened highway.
The Terms of the Trade
The exchange is with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), which manages Gulf State Park. On paper, the city gives up more land than it gets:
- To the City: 30.19 acres of undeveloped land from Gulf State Park, to accommodate future infrastructure improvements
- To the State: 53.71 acres of undeveloped land transferred from the city to ADCNR for inclusion in Gulf State Park
The lopsided acreage is the point. What the city needed was not more land overall — it was this specific land, in a line, in the right place. The 30 acres from the park form the corridor that lets a connector road run through without cutting into established subdivisions.
The Bridge Alone Was Never Going to Fix It
The recent opening of the new Intracoastal Waterway bridge added real capacity in both directions, and it stands as a major milestone for mobility on the island. But city leadership, including Mayor Robert Craft, has consistently made the point that a bridge is only as useful as what it connects to.
Without an efficient east-west link between Canal Road and Highway 59, traffic coming off the bridge simply gets funneled into the same pinch points it always did — or diverted into residential streets that were never built to carry it.
A Route Chosen to Spare the Subdivisions
A 2023 corridor study commissioned by the city evaluated the alternatives for that east-west connection. The goal was a reliable route with minimal disruption to existing neighborhoods.
Acquiring the specific acreage from Gulf State Park is what makes the preferred route possible. It gives the city a path that bypasses established subdivisions rather than cutting through them — preserving the character of those residential areas while still delivering the connection.
The Next Phase: Baldwin Beach Express II
Beyond the bypass road, Baldwin County leaders are already looking further down the road — literally. In January 2026, the Baldwin County Commission adopted an updated access management plan for the “Baldwin Beach Express II” (BBE II), a planned 25-mile, multi-lane divided highway that would connect Interstate 10 to Interstate 65.
Baldwin County Engineer Frank Lundy has described the project as a historic milestone for the county, one designed to accommodate Baldwin County’s rapid growth while preserving the character of the surrounding roadway. The design leans heavily on grade-separated interchanges at most primary intersections, allowing traffic to enter and exit without disrupting the main flow. Minor intersections would be limited to right-in/right-out access, with key interchanges planned at I-10 and I-65, an approach intended to avoid the kind of intersection congestion that has plagued older Baldwin County corridors like Highway 59.
What It Means for Residents
For property owners who have spent months watching detour traffic roll past their houses, the vote is the first concrete sign of an end date. The land exchange does not build the road by itself; design, funding and construction still lie ahead. But it clears the single largest obstacle, which was securing the ground to build on.
As the Alabama Gulf Coast keeps absorbing growth, the pattern is a familiar one for coastal cities: the infrastructure that made the growth possible arrives first, and the connections that make it livable arrive after. Gulf Shores is now working on the second half of that equation, even as Baldwin County plans its next major corridor to keep pace with the region’s continued expansion.
How the Detour Runs Today
The land swap traces back to a 2023 corridor study that first identified a future east-west link running from Canal Road through Gulf State Park to Highway 59. In the meantime, westbound traffic on Canal Road has been routed onto 2nd Avenue and past Meyer Park to East 22nd Avenue — the very detour through Gulf Pines that the new bypass is designed to eliminate.
Dan Bond, the city’s Director of Natural Resources, said the exchange required extensive environmental review because of the Gulf State Park land involved. “All that work has been completed, and so we are ready to record the deeds and make the property transfer,” Bond said.
No construction timeline has been set for the bypass itself, but with the land now secured, the city has cleared one of the steps ALDOT will need before it can build the connector road linking Highway 59 and Canal Road around Gulf Shores’ oldest neighborhood. “This is a long way off, but now we have something for the future,” Mayor Robert Craft said.
City officials also noted that a chunk of the current traffic increase on Canal Road stems from a separate project — a community plaza being built at the pedestrian Intracoastal Waterway bridge on 1st Street, which is why traffic is currently being pushed onto East 2nd Street.