b'C o m m u n i t yBIG OPPORTUNITIES TO COME WITH NEW BRIDGEEventually, Corpus Christi will have a new Harbor Bridge. It isnt close this year, the year it was originally projected to open, but sooner or later, we will have a new bridge. And like everything else, not long after the new Harbor Bridge is being enjoyed daily by commuters to and from the city and the North Bay area, the years of delays will be quickly forgiven and forgotten.The long-term benefits of replacing the current 1959 Harbor Bridge will endure for generations, the most significant of which is undoing a dangerous set of design flaws that seemed to favor a lovely view of the city and Corpus Christi Bay, over traffic safety and efficiency. If you look at the route of the new bridge, a straight shot from North Beach to the interchange of Crosstown Expressway (TX-286) and IH-37, illustrated next to the route of the current bridge, you see the extreme curves toward the bay that have resulted in dozens of major traffic accidents over the 62-year life of the bridge.These somewhat wild curves also resulted in extreme approach angles over the bridge, providing only minimum distance to build up speed and then quickly reduce speed going over. The result is the least-fuel efficient design possible, along with the most dangerous descent possible, especially for new drivers of the bridge who dont know about the peril of too much speed on the downside. Bless those brilliant engineers of the 1950s!The new Harbor Bridge is engineered for a 170-year life span and will be the longest, tallest cable-stay bridge in North America, as well as the biggest, single infrastructure project in the state of Texas, at a cost of over $1 billion when its all said and done. For Coastal Benders, the new bridge will forever alter the iconic im-age of Corpus Christi with the 1959 bridge, while also redefining how we view the way the city is connected. For example, most of us have always viewed downtown and North Beach as just a relatively short hop over the bridge, from the on-ramp at Mesquite St. and IH-37, to the exit at the bottom of the bridge at Burleson Blvd.altogether, about five minutes.When the new bridge opens, less a ferry across the ship channel, getting from downtown to North Beach will become an entirely different challenge. According 26 THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'