Margaret Donnelly has long feared traversing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, well before news of a broken concrete barrier and rusty bolts on the bridge’s eastbound span.
“I’m not trying to focus on that. I’m trying to get better,” said Donnelly, of Springfield, Va., who frequently travels to the Eastern Shore for business.
She is one of the thousands of people annually who need help crossing the 4.3-mile bridge because of gephyrophobia, or the fear of crossing bridges.
They rely on state-sponsored shuttle service, Kent Island Express, which operates out of the Queen Anne Bay Bridge Airport in Grasonville.
Daily, Ken Medell, the shuttle’s owner, and his staff help eight to 20 people by either driving them across the bridge in their vehicles or in the shuttle.
Medell said he hasn’t seen an increase in customers since the Aug. 10 accident, when a tractor-trailer driver died after crashing through a concrete barrier trying to avoid an oncoming car and plunging into the Bay.
Subsequent investigation found the steel used to hold the barriers together was corroded.
But Medell said he has gotten more inquiries about his business since the accident.
He doesn’t claim to be a psychologist, but has learned a lot from his clients.
“The fear varies for some people — for some it’s the fact that there is no shoulder, or the curve in the bridge, or that it is too high,” Medell said.
One man asked Medell to put him in the trunk while they crossed the bridge. Medell said he refused, and so the man lay down in the backseat under a blanket.
Meanwhile, crews wrapped up construction over the weekend and opened all lanes to traffic. Work to bolster the parapets had closed the right lane of the eastbound span.
Shiny new guardrails bolted to the concrete barriers could be seen Monday at the beginning and end of the span, along with large bolts connecting the barriers and the bridge’s deck.
Maryland Transportation Authority officials said Monday the eastbound span will be reduced to one lane again starting today as contractors inspect the left side of the span.
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