The Heide Trask Drawbridge lifts on demand right now, whenever a sailboat mast or a shrimp boat needs to clear Banks Channel. That stops this fall. Once construction begins on the first of three new bridges nearby, the drawbridge will open only on the hour, a change the U.S. Coast Guard is putting in place to keep car traffic moving while road crews work a short distance away. No pavement on the island has closed yet. The clock changes anyway.
That order of operations is the part worth understanding if you live here. The North Carolina Department of Transportation is replacing three aging vehicle bridges onto Wrightsville Beach under a single project, listed in the state's transportation improvement program as HB-0040. The drawbridge itself isn't one of the three. It's a separate, older span, and the hourly restriction is a side effect of the bigger project rather than a project of its own. Boaters feel the change before drivers do.
The Clock, Not the Concrete
The three bridges getting rebuilt are the Causeway Drive Bridge over Banks Channel and two spans on West Salisbury Street, one over Lees Cut and one longer bridge over Banks Channel itself. All three were built in the 1960s and 70s and have reached the point where NCDOT says patch repairs are no longer a workable option. None of them have started visible construction yet. The drawbridge schedule change starts anyway, because NCDOT is coordinating with the Coast Guard to reduce how often the span lifts while heavy equipment and material trucks move through the area.
The restriction isn't the same for every boat. Pleasure vessels will be able to pass under the bridge at the top of each hour. Commercial vessels involved in towing or dredging will need to call ahead with thirty minutes notice, according to an NCDOT spokesperson identified as Carroll at a briefing this past August. If your fall calendar includes an early-morning fishing run, plan around the hourly opening; for commercial towing or dredging, that thirty-minute lead time is now part of the plan, not a courtesy.
Three Bridges, One Bid, Different Timelines
The project covers three structures, but they are not moving on the same schedule, and the differences matter more than the headline number.
| Bridge | Road | Status this fall | Expected disruption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lees Cut Bridge | West Salisbury Street (US 74) | Construction starts late 2026 | West Salisbury Street closed between Lookout Harbour and the eastern entrance of Pelican Drive for about a year |
| Salisbury Long Bridge | West Salisbury Street (US 74) over Banks Channel | Construction starts summer 2027 | Not yet detailed |
| Causeway Drive Bridge | Causeway Drive (US 76) over Banks Channel | Construction phased, overlapping with Salisbury Long Bridge | Two lanes in each direction maintained throughout |
The bridge most residents worry about, the one carrying Causeway Drive traffic on and off the island, is the one NCDOT has committed to keeping fully open in both directions for the length of construction. The bridge fewer people think about, the short span over Lees Cut, is the one that actually closes a stretch of road for a year.
The One That Actually Closes a Road
Utility relocation around Lees Cut has already been underway since mid-2026, and NCDOT has said the bridge itself won't close to traffic until after Labor Day, with replacement construction beginning by the end of the year. Once it does, West Salisbury Street will be shut down between Lookout Harbour and the eastern entrance of Pelican Drive for the roughly twelve months it takes to build the new span. That stretch is a fraction of the island's road network, but it's the one piece of this project with a hard, dated closure attached to it rather than a lane restriction.
The second West Salisbury Street bridge, the longer one crossing Banks Channel, follows about a year behind. NCDOT has said construction there begins in the summer of 2027, one year earlier than the agency's original estimate.
Why Causeway Drive Gets Built Around Itself
Causeway Drive is the bridge every visitor and most residents actually cross, and it's getting the gentlest construction plan of the three. Rather than closing the existing structure, crews will build a new bridge just north of the current one. Once the new span is ready, traffic shifts onto it, the old bridge comes down, and the second half of the new structure goes up in its place. The two halves are then tied together into a single four-lane bridge with a center median. NCDOT's engineering consultant, Chad Kimes of GFT Engineering, told the town's Bridge Replacement Committee this year that the finished bridge will sit roughly four feet higher at its center than the current one, and that two travel lanes in each direction, along with the multiuse path, are expected to stay open the entire time.
That's the tradeoff built into this project. The bridge that carries the most daily traffic gets built beside itself so driving habits barely change. The smaller bridge that almost nobody names when they talk about "the bridge" is the one that actually reroutes a stretch of West Salisbury Street for a year.
The Committee Keeping Score
The project's price has already moved once, from an initial estimate near $70 million to a current figure of $105 million, and its finish line has moved too, from an original 2032 target to a revised spring 2030 completion under a construction manager and general contractor delivery method that NCDOT says can shave up to two years off a project like this.
Tracking those changes as they happen is the job of the town's Bridge Replacement Committee, a group of six residents, three ex officio members, including a representative of the Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce, and four town staff. The committee meets at the Wrightsville Beach Public Safety Building and has spent this year working through emergency response coordination, drawbridge scheduling with the Coast Guard, and resident questions about everything from soil borings on Parmele Boulevard to whether island parking will still be available during construction. The town has no authority over NCDOT's design or schedule, but the committee is the closest thing to a standing translator between the agency and the people who live here.
This isn't the first time Wrightsville Beach infrastructure has moved on its own institutional clock rather than a resident's. The town's approach to its public bulkhead program follows a similarly deliberate, budget-driven pace, which is worth understanding if you're weighing waterfront maintenance timelines alongside a project like this one.
What a Fall Here Actually Looks Like
None of this changes how you get to Wrightsville Beach this week. It changes how you plan a boat trip around the drawbridge’s hourly opening, and it puts a specific stretch of West Salisbury Street, from Lookout Harbour to Pelican Drive, on notice for a yearlong detour starting late this year. The Causeway Drive commute most people rely on daily is, for now, the one part of this project built to stay out of the way.
If you're trying to time a boat delivery, a contractor's material truck, or just a Saturday morning outside the hourly window, the town's Bridge Replacement Committee meeting notes are the most current source, and they're worth checking before the fall committee schedule fills in further.
Tongue & Groove Luxury Real Estate keeps an eye on infrastructure changes like this one for the same reason we track tide lines and flood maps: because the people who live on this island deserve to hear about it from neighbors, not just from a construction sign.