Two of the three northbound lanes of the Edison Bridge have been closed since eight o'clock last night and are not due back until around noon today, which is six hours later than the nightly closures on this bridge normally end
Two of the three northbound lanes of the Edison Bridge have been shut since eight o'clock last night, and the Florida Department of Transportation does not expect them back until around noon today.
The department closed the northbound outside lanes and the shoulder at 8 p.m. on Friday. The inside travel lane has remained open throughout, so northbound Business 41 traffic is still crossing the Caloosahatchee, on one lane instead of three.
What makes this one worth a driver's attention is the hour it ends rather than the hour it started.
Crews have been working the Edison Bridge on and off since Friday, July 31, and the department's own published hours for that job run between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. On an ordinary morning the bridge is back to full width before the working day begins. This closure runs about six hours past that.
The department states the reason in the notice rather than leaving it to be guessed at. Crews are maintaining bridge joints, and, in its words, the closure duration will include sufficient time for the required curing period before lanes are open for traffic. The material sets on its own schedule.
One word in that notice is worth holding on to. The department writes that the closure is expected to reopen around noon. That is an expectation and not a commitment, and the department itself points drivers to FL511.com for the live position rather than to its own estimate.
For anyone who would rather not sit in the merge, the other crossing is the obvious answer. The US 41 bridge over the Caloosahatchee runs alongside and carries no daytime restriction this morning.
Nothing else is going wrong around it. The Florida Highway Patrol dispatch board was read shortly after 7.30 this morning and carried no crash and no unplanned incident on any state road anywhere in Lee or Collier county. That is a statement about state roads only, because the board does not carry county or city streets, which should be treated as unreported rather than confirmed clear.
The weather is not a factor during the closure window either. There is no active National Weather Service alert touching Lee or Collier, and no active storm in the Atlantic. The forecast for Fort Myers today is mostly sunny with a high near 92, a heat index reaching 105, and a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2 p.m. The rain, if it comes, arrives after the lanes are due back rather than during the work on them.
The job behind all this is a modest one, and it is not finished. The contract is worth $1.17 million and covers both river crossings at once: bridge joints on the two structures that carry Business 41 over the Edison Bridge, and pile jackets on the US 41 bridge over the Caloosahatchee beside it. The department's schedule carries intermittent overnight closures on the Edison Bridge through September, and on the Caloosahatchee Bridge, where the pile jacket work started back on May 21, through September as well.
So there will be more nights like this one between now and the autumn. This morning is a useful reminder that the 6 a.m. end of the nightly window is how it usually goes rather than a guarantee of how it always will.
