Residents balk at years-long wait to replace Carroll Road bridge

Residents knew soon after the Carroll Road bridge collapsed a year ago that any extended closure would be inconvenient.

Residents who crossed the northern Baltimore County bridge daily now have to take an eight-mile detour. They are growing impatient because they say the rebuilding is taking too long.

“It just seems wasteful and misguided for the county to be in the design stage, as they said, for three-plus years and then start construction,” said Linda Woolf, 73, who lives a few doors down from where the bridge used to be on Carroll Road. “There’s got to be a better way.”

The crossing is just north of Carroll and Philpot roads, and drivers use it to cross a stream that flows west into the Big Gunpowder Falls and reaches the Loch Raven Reservoir. The single-lane metal truss bridge was built in 1879 and is listed on the Maryland Historical Trust’s Historic Bridge Inventory.

In October 2025, a tree fell and leaned against the bridge, compromising its structure. The bridge collapsed when a septic truck drove over it. No one was injured, and the Baltimore County Police Department found that the truck was not at fault.

The county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation applied for and received $830,000 in federal funding for the first phase of design, said spokesman Ron Snyder. That allowed it to prioritize structural, roadway and traffic engineering, environmental design and community input.

County officials estimate that rebuilding the bridge will cost around $5 million and that the county would need additional funding.

The department estimates that the project will take four years from design through construction, with completion planned between summer 2030 and spring 2031. Construction would not begin until at least 2030.

“We know that this is a process that’s longer than many residents would like it to be,” Snyder said.

“It’s not a matter of just building the bridge,” he said. First, the department needs to apply for additional funding. Then it has to solicit contractors for the design. Environmental regulations need to be reviewed. Permitting issues may come up. “Unfortunately, a project like this takes time. We’re working as quickly as possible,” he said.

Although Carroll Road was not heavily used, people took it regularly to travel between areas around Monkton and destinations farther south.

Before the bridge’s collapse, Maryland’s Department of Transportation State Highway Administration estimated that 2,485 vehicles would drive on the 0.10-mile stretch of Carroll Road south of Monkton Road to where the bridge was located. According to the most recent study by the highway administration conducted over two days in January 2020, traffic peaked at 5 p.m., when 303 vehicles traveled northbound. Traffic volumes were lower during the rest of the day.

Residents say they have two concerns: the lengthy closure and the county’s initial bridge design. The county decided against installing a prefabricated bridge because it would require “repetitive and costly maintenance.” It considered replacing the single-lane bridge with two lanes, allowing vehicles to cross and carry loads within the legal weight limit without restriction.

Current design codes specify that the bridge should have two lanes, according to the county’s website, and would require a design exception to waive. Snyder said the county would work with the federal government to obtain a waiver if it believed that was necessary.

Residents are adamant that they don’t want a two-lane bridge.

“This bridge was there for 100-plus years, as a one-lane bridge. It did the job,” Woolf said. “It was consistent with the rural nature of the road.”

At a town hall meeting with county officials in early September, residents were emphatic. Fran Burns, who helped organize the meeting, said she worried that the county’s plan to build a two-lane bridge would extend the construction timeline and increase traffic on the rural road.

“We’re not asking for bells and whistles and this and that. We’re asking for a replacement for what we had. It’s pretty simple,” said Burns, 68.

“We don’t want a two-lane bridge. We don’t need it,” she said.

The county has not completed plans for the bridge, including whether it would be a one-lane or two-lane structure, Snyder said. While officials initially explored two lanes, he said they “heard the community’s concerns” and are considering all options.

Burns lives on a horse farm north of the bridge. She said the detour affected her less than neighbors who regularly commute to work. She said she used to take the Carroll Road bridge multiple times a week whenever she drove to Hunt Valley.

These days, with the detour, she tries to run several errands at once.

“I have to go north to go south,” she said. “It’s clearly added at least 20 minutes to my trip. Now I have to go out and around. It’s taking me, like, 40 minutes.”

She said the detour has dumped more traffic onto Sparks Road and made it more dangerous. It’s worse for those who need to turn left onto York Road from Sparks Road, she said.

“It’s tough on a good day, but when you funnel all that traffic there ...,” she said, “ it’s nearly impossible. It’s very dangerous.”

Marcia Bryant, 68, the store manager at Roseda Farm, a beef cattle farm on Carroll Road just north of the bridge, said the closure has hurt her customers.

“It’s been very difficult on our customers to find us, and therefore it’s difficult on us,” she said. It was worse when the bridge first went down. Business slowed for a bit in those first few months. People have since learned their way around the closure, but Bryant said the number of new customers has decreased.

“I’ll have people call and say, ‘You know, I can’t come now. It takes me an extra 25 minutes to get there. You’ve lost me as a customer for now,’” she said. “Maybe when the bridge is back, you know, they’ll come back again.”