After protests from Arkansas commuters and elected officials, Tennessee Dept. of Transportation cancelled plans for a project on an Interstate 55 interchange in Memphis that would have closed the I-55 Mississippi River bridge for months.
Instead, they will conduct more-detailed assessments of the economic and community effects of doing the project at the I-55/E.H. Crump Boulevard interchange with a bridge closure or rebuilding the interchange with partial lane closures. The studies could take as long as a year to complete.
The decision to delay the project and perform the more-detailed studies is based on public comment from meetings held earlier this year.
“Over the past several weeks, we have heard from residents, business owners, elected officials and other stakeholders in Memphis and in Arkansas, and we understand there is a significant level of concern over a full closure of the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge,” the head of the Tennessee agency, John Schroer, said in the statement. “We want to take the opportunity to address those concerns before moving forward with construction.”
The announcement to close the bridge prompted loud protests from the Arkansas side of the bridge, led by state Sen. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, whose hometown of more than 25,000 people is on the bridge’s west side. Ingram began an online petition, “Keep the Old Bridge Open,” that gathered close to 2,800 signatures.
The bridge carries about the same amount of traffic, 45,000 vehicles daily, as the other crossing between Memphis and West Memphis, the Interstate 40, or Hernando de Soto, Bridge. Closing one bridge would force extra traffic onto the I-40 six-lane bridge, which is still undergoing seismic retrofitting work.
