South Padre Island second bridge coming back to life

[MaxConcrete]

The agenda for next week's commission meeting includes the following item

Cameron County - Between the city of Brownsville and South Padre Island, consider
designating SH 104 on a new location on the state highway system (MO)
This minute order designates SH 104 on a new location on the state highway system from FM 106 eastward
to Park Road 100 on South Padre Island, a distance of approximately 11.1 miles.

The CCRMA project status document states the project is "Recently redesignated to a Non-Tolled project development strategy". So it appears TxDOT is poised to take over the project as a non-tolled project.

This is somewhat of a surprise to me, but appears to be in response to action by the Texas legislature.

This project has been under study since 2008, and has been on hold in recent years. The main problems are the cost for the 7+ mile-long bridge, and getting environmental clearance. My view was that the cost will be too high to justify the construction. All the alignments cross the Laguna Madre where it is about 7 miles wide, in contrast to the existing bridge which is only about 2.4 miles long. The Laguna Atascosa wildlife refuge forces the west (mainland) end to be south of the Cameron County airport, so the proposed bridge will be only about 4 miles north of the existing bridge.

My view it that is makes more sense to build a new span near the existing bridge, with enough separation to ensure an errant barge won't take out both spans at the same time. (The bridge was hit and collapsed on September 15, 2001, resulting in 8 fatalities a two-month outage). The existing bridge is 2x2 and lacks shoulders, so it could serve one direction of traffic with three lanes and a shoulder.

I don't know if an alignment has been selected. The only map I could find is below.

[jgb191]

Would it also make sense to extend Interstate 2 around Harlingen (perhaps using Loop 499) passing by the Valley Int'l Airport eastward to connect to the new bridge to South Padre?  There ought to be a major highway/freeway connector route to connect with I-69E instead of driving taking TX-100 through Laguna Heights and Pt. Isabel; this new route could also better connect South Padre Island to the nearby Cameron County Airport.

[MaxConcrete]

A map is now online for the commission meeting.
https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot/commission/2023/1212/9.pdf

On the mainland side, the bridge uses the north alignment shown in the image above with alternative alignments. The alignment follows Schafer Road.

The bridge is 8 miles long. It will have a high crossing over the intracoastal waterway, which is near the midpoint of the bridge.

On Padre Island, the bridge is about 2.5 miles north of the northern limit of development on the island. Padre Boulevard (the main road on the island) runs another 4 miles north of the bridge before it ends.

[Plutonic Panda]

Looks like the number will be SH 104

https://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/txdot-designates-second-south-padre-island-causeway-project-as-state-roadway/63534