Beverly Hall-Whitaker Drawbridge Update On The Way, At Last

BEVERLY, MA — A long-awaited update on Beverly's shut down Hall-Whitaker Bridge is set for next month.

The city has scheduled a public meeting with the state Department of Transportation on Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. in the Beverly High Auditorium.

The drawbridge was closed permanently to traffic in June after a state inspection deemed it deficient. The bridge that carries Bridge Street over the Bass River was found to have "insufficient load-carrying capacity due to significant deterioration in the primary structural elements, warranting the closure of the bridge to all vehicular traffic."

A public meeting was held the next week that provided a call for urgency but few specifics on the timeline for a replacement.

"A temporary bridge may or may not be possible," Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill said at the June 23 forum. "But we hope that it is."

Cahill said at the time that it would be toward the end of the summer before the state could even determine the feasibility of a temporary bridge.

"If so, go full speed with it," he said. "If it's not, know quickly enough that the focus will be on the permanent bridge."

Cahill said that night there would be a second public forum this summer where Mass DOT representatives would attend and hopefully bring with them more concrete timelines.

"We're going to get them here in Beverly as soon as they have some of these answers," he said, "which maybe it's July, maybe it's August.

"But as soon as we can get them here we'll do this again."

As it turns out, they'll do it again in October.

In the meantime, the Kernwood Bridge has provided its own frustrations to city travelers— twice this summer closing for hours during the afternoon commute because of "mechanical issues."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)