Local transportation leaders are set to vote, again, on keeping a toll on the table to help fund the replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.

The Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO) board will consider a resolution at its meeting on Wednesday to support including the bridge replacement project as a toll facility in the N.C. Department of Transportation’s upcoming State Transportation Improvement Program, or STIP.

The resolution also supports amending Cape Fear Moving Forward 2045, a local transportation plan, to include the replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge as a toll facility. The resolution also states that the WMPO has the “right to withdraw any approval of a toll option at any time up until the Department (of Transportation) advertises for a contract to construct the replacement bridge.” Click here to read the text of the resolution.

The WMPO board last faced a vote on the bridge toll in January 2024, when board members voted 8-5 in support of a resolution asking state transportation officials to evaluate a tolled option as they worked to find funding to replace the aging bridge. In February 2022, the board also adopted a resolution urging consideration of all possible options, including tolls, for the bridge’s replacement.

Now, the N.C. Department of Transportation is asking the WMPO to reaffirm its support for the tolled option.

“For planning purposes, NCDOT needs clarification from the WMPO whether the tolled option should stay in the draft 2026-2035 (State Transportation Improvement Program or STIP),” NCDOT spokesperson Lauren Haviland wrote this week in an email to the Business Journal. “For the project to move forward as tolled, future affirmation by the WMPO Board is required, per the Board’s January 2024 resolution and state law.”

According to the WMPO resolution, state law and the N.C. Toll Project Development Handbook "requires that all affected MPOs (or RPOs) must approve the project for inclusion in its comprehensive transportation plan, metropolitan transportation plan, or other adopted local plans.”

With the toll option included, the bridge replacement ranked No. 9 overall in a draft of the Department of Transportation’s Prioritization 7.0, which was released in June 2024. The tolled project also received a potential commitment of $85 million in funding. Meanwhile, the untolled option ranked No. 211 statewide and remained unfunded.

The cost of replacing the bridge has climbed in the last year from an estimated $437 million to up to $1.1 billion, according to NCDOT officials. 

Last summer, the project secured $242 million in federal grant funding, but those funds, along with all U.S. Department of Transportation discretionary grants, were put on pause in late February for further review by the Trump Administration. Federal representatives have offered assurances that the funding will come through, but the grant remains under review, according to Haviland.

In another development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently recommended that the bridge replacement have a minimum vertical clearance height of 135 feet. 

Haviland said that NCDOT and the WMPO continue to look at all funding options to replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.

“As it stands currently, the tolled and non-tolled project options were scored in the draft 2026-2035 STIP,” she wrote. “The only project that scored high enough for funding was the tolled option.”

The WMPO board meets Wednesday at 3 p.m. in the WMPO Board Room at 525 N. Fourth St. in Wilmington. Members of the public can join the meeting in person or on Zoom.