MOBILE, Ala. — Resistance to the toll plan behind the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project keeps broadening, with Mobile’s legislative delegation sending Gov. Kay Ivey a letter this week laying out its concerns about how the work would be paid for.
The financing proposal on the table would charge drivers between $3 and $6 each way, a figure that has become a sore point for the thousands of commuters who cross between Mobile and Baldwin County every day.
A Growing List Of Critics
The delegation’s letter puts it alongside U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, the mayors of the Eastern Shore cities, and roughly 25,000 members of the “Block the Mobile Bayway Toll” Facebook group organized by State Auditor Jim Zeigler.
State Sen. Chris Elliott has now added his name to the list of officials objecting to the funding mechanism.
“It is clear that this project and the funding mechanism that is being proposed right now is simply unacceptable for coastal Alabama,” Elliott said.
Elliott has consistently argued the region needs the new bridge and says he still does. His objection is to paying for it with high tolls locked in for decades. He raised the possibility that a federal infrastructure package could arrive within a couple of years and cover a share of the cost, leaving drivers committed to 50 years of tolls that might not have been necessary.
Decision Sits With A State Authority
Elliott said he plans to urge the governor to wait and see whether federal money materializes. Ivey chairs the Toll Road, Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the body with the power to advance or halt the project. Of its nine members, only two have any connection to the Gulf Coast.
ALDOT Director John Cooper offered little detail when he met with Baldwin County’s legislative delegation the week prior, saying only that the department had “discussed some concepts with them that might be ready for public dissemination in the near future.”
Cooper is expected to hold a news conference Wednesday at ALDOT’s field office in Mobile. Whether that update includes reduced or waived tolls for local drivers who use the crossing daily remains unclear.