A steel plate laid down during the Edison Bridge joint repairs has left drivers paying for tyres and suspension work, and the Florida Department of Transportation's answer is a warning sign and a claims form

Drivers on the Edison Bridge are paying for tyres and suspension work after hitting a steel plate laid down during the bridge joint repairs, and the Florida Department of Transportation has responded with a warning sign and a pointer to its claims office.

Gulf Coast News reported the damage on Wednesday evening, in a story by Kendall Brandt updated at 6.36 p.m. It reported that FDOT crews abruptly closed lanes on the bridge on Tuesday for maintenance to a bridge joint, that the work included installing a new plate on the pavement, and that drivers have reported damage from hitting it.

Austin Koehn of Cape Coral told that newsroom he struck the plate at 25 to 30 miles an hour in gridlock traffic, knew immediately he had done damage, and saw his tyre pressure sensor come on before he was down off the bridge. He said replacing all four tyres would cost him about $1,100. Tyler Nickleski of Tampa told the same newsroom he is borrowing a family member's vehicle while he waits on an estimate covering tyres and suspension components, and expects to need an alignment.

Those are two drivers' accounts as reported by one newsroom. Nobody has published a count of how many vehicles have been damaged, and none is estimated here.

A department spokesperson told the newsroom FDOT is aware of the damage reports and advised drivers to photograph any damage and submit it to the department's claims office. FDOT has since installed a sign ahead of the bridge warning of the bump.

The claims route exists and is worth stating precisely. The department's Claims Section processes claims from people seeking to recover money for damage to their property. A claim may be filed electronically through the department's Claims Management System, or on paper by completing a Statement of Claim for Property Damage together with a Lien Disclosure Statement and mailing it to Florida Department of Transportation, Claims Processing, 605 Suwannee Street, MS-58, Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0458. The department asks claimants to allow extra time for paper filings.

Filing is not the same as recovering. FDOT publishes a procedure for bringing a claim and publishes no undertaking to pay one, and nothing on its claims page commits the department to covering a repair bill. That is the reason the advice to photograph the damage matters before a tyre is replaced.

The work behind the plate runs into the winter. FDOT's own page for contract 451357-1, a $1.17 million bridge repair and rehabilitation job covering the Edison Bridge structures and the U.S. 41 bridge over the Caloosahatchee, has joint work on the Edison Bridge running from Friday July 31 through Winter 2026, with intermittent overnight northbound and southbound lane closures between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Pile jacket work on the Caloosahatchee Bridge has run on the same hours since May 21.

The newsroom reported that roadside signs indicate nightly lane closures through December 21. That date does not appear on the department's page, which gives Winter 2026, so the December date is carried here as what the signs say rather than as an FDOT statement.

This site carried a northbound double lane closure on this bridge that reopened around noon on August 8, and another northbound inside lane closure on August 11. This is the same job. What has changed is that the cost of it has started landing on drivers.