Ask anyone on the island which bridge is under construction right now and you'll get a confident, half-right answer. Most people point to Causeway Drive, the route almost everyone uses to get on and off Wrightsville Beach. It's the bridge with the drawbridge. It's the one that shows up in every hurricane evacuation conversation. It feels like the obvious answer.
It's not the bridge closing this fall. And the way North Carolina's Department of Transportation has sequenced this $105 million project means the road that actually shuts down first isn't the one most residents are bracing for, while the route that stays open is where the daily friction will actually show up.
Three Bridges, One Project, Very Different Timelines
NCDOT is replacing three aging structures under a single project, listed as HB-0040. Two are on West Salisbury Street, US 74: one crossing Lees Cut, one crossing Banks Channel. The third is on Causeway Drive, US 76, also over Banks Channel, and it's the one carrying the Heide Trask Drawbridge.
| Bridge | Crossing | What happens this fall |
|---|---|---|
| West Salisbury St (US 74) | Lees Cut | Closes for full reconstruction, starting fall 2026 |
| West Salisbury St (US 74) | Banks Channel | Stays open, waits its turn |
| Causeway Drive (US 76) | Banks Channel | Stays open to traffic, but the drawbridge shifts to opening only on the hour |
Construction on the Lees Cut bridge is set to begin this fall, and the road at that crossing will close for the duration of that specific bridge's rebuild, according to NCDOT's own project documentation. Causeway Drive, meanwhile, isn't scheduled to see its bridge work begin until after Lees Cut wraps, with the Town's estimates pointing toward the larger Banks Channel-area bridges starting construction around 2028.
Why the Closed Road Isn't the One to Watch
Here's the detail that gets lost in the "the bridge is closing" shorthand making the rounds on the island. West Salisbury Street's Lees Cut crossing has functioned as a quieter, secondary route on and off Wrightsville Beach. When that crossing closes this fall, more of the daily traffic that used to split between two routes gets funneled onto Causeway Drive, the road that isn't under construction.
NCDOT appears to be planning for exactly that. According to the Town's own project updates, once Lees Cut construction begins this fall, the Heide Trask Drawbridge will start opening only on the hour, a change made specifically to manage traffic flow during the project. That means boaters waiting for a swing and drivers timing a beach run around drawbridge openings are both about to deal with a tighter, more predictable but less frequent schedule, on a bridge that technically isn't even the one being replaced yet.
If you've lived here long enough to have an internal clock for the drawbridge, that clock is about to reset.
"Wrightsville Beach is committed to keeping residents informed and minimizing disruptions throughout the duration of this important infrastructure project."
That's the Town's own language from a project update issued in early July, and it's a reasonable summary of how this has actually played out so far: incremental, telegraphed work rather than a single dramatic closure.
What Already Happened This Summer
The disruption didn't start with a bang. It's been a string of smaller, well-flagged phases, each one preparing the ground for the next:
- Late April: NCDOT closed lanes on the Salisbury Street bridge over Banks Channel for about three weeks while crews drilled through the bridge deck for testing, working 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays with pedestrians detoured to the north side.
- Late June: The same drilling and testing work on the Causeway Drive bridge wrapped up around June 26.
- Early July: Crews began utility relocation for the Lees Cut bridge on July 6, removing a small number of trees and shrubs and working along the westbound side of West Salisbury Street between the two bridges, near Pelican Drive. The work stayed inside NCDOT's right-of-way and didn't touch private property.
- Mid-July: Nightly lane closures returned to Causeway Drive, this time both eastbound lanes from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays, for another round of deck testing that finished around July 22.
- Late July into mid-August: Crews started moving power poles near the Lees Cut bridge on July 20, work described as a critical step in preparing the area for construction. Most of it falls outside the actual travel lanes, so traffic impact has been minimal, and NCDOT expects it wrapped by mid-August.
That last item is happening right now. If you've noticed utility crews near the Lees Cut end of West Salisbury Street this week, that's this phase in progress, with NCDOT targeting a finish sometime in the next couple of weeks, not the start of a new one.
The Long View: A Project That Runs Through 2032
It's worth sizing this correctly, because "bridge project" undersells what's actually planned. NCDOT's total estimate for all three replacements is $105 million, with an earlier project breakdown putting roughly $70 million toward construction and $35 million toward land acquisition along the work zones. The Town's most recent public estimate puts full completion in late 2032.
The sequencing explains why. Lees Cut goes first, starting this fall, because it's the smaller of the three structures and can be closed outright without cutting off island access, since Causeway Drive stays open the whole time. Once Lees Cut is finished, work shifts to the Banks Channel bridge on West Salisbury Street and to Causeway Drive itself, which will be built in two shifted halves so at least two travel lanes stay open in each direction throughout the rest of construction. A new northern half goes up first, traffic shifts onto it, the old structure comes down, and the second half follows.
Every new bridge will also get 10 to 12 foot multi-use paths and 6 foot bike lanes, upgrades none of the current structures have. NCDOT isn't adding vehicle lanes. This is a like-for-like replacement with better infrastructure for walkers and cyclists layered on top, not a capacity expansion.
None of this happened without resident input. NCDOT collected 291 survey responses that shaped the current design, and the Town's Bridge Replacement Committee, chaired by resident Neal Andrew and made up of six residents, three ex officio members, and four town staff, has been meeting since before construction started to push for traffic studies and emergency response planning specific to the island's needs.
What This Means for the Next Few Months
If you live on Wrightsville Beach, here's the practical version:
- Watch the drawbridge schedule, not just the Lees Cut closure. The hourly restriction on the Heide Trask Drawbridge takes effect when Lees Cut construction begins this fall. That's the change most likely to show up in your actual commute.
- Expect the Lees Cut crossing to be closed outright, not just reduced, once its construction phase starts. Plan alternate routes through Causeway Drive accordingly.
- Nightly and daytime lane closures on Causeway Drive have already happened once this summer for testing. More closures tied to the next construction phase are likely as work there ramps up after Lees Cut.
- This is a multi-year project. The current fall 2026 start on Lees Cut is phase one of a sequence that isn't expected to wrap until late 2032. Plan your expectations around years, not a single construction season.
- Sign up for direct updates. NCDOT and the Town have both said they'll continue notifying the public as work progresses, and the Town's project page is the most current source for meeting dates and lane closure notices as they're announced.
The island has absorbed a genuinely construction-heavy year already, between this bridge project and a separate CFPUA water and sewer crossing that closed part of West Pelican Drive back in January. What's coming this fall is a bigger, longer commitment, but it's also one the Town has been unusually transparent about as it unfolds.
Whether you're settled here for good or thinking about what property on this stretch of coast looks like once the dust settles on a decade-long infrastructure upgrade, it helps to have someone tracking these details as they change. If you have questions about what any of this means for a specific property or a future move on or off the island, Capital to the Coast is happy to talk through it, no pressure, just a local perspective grounded in what's actually happening on the ground.
