In infrastructure politics, battles over toll bridges are about as strange and dramatic as they get, and beautiful coastal Alabama has been the site of quite a battle over the last decade or so. It reached a crescendo in May, when Alabama Circuit Judge Jimmy B. Pool issued a preliminary injunction to block the construction of the Gulf Shores Bridge Project. Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) Director John Cooper filed an emergency motion to lift the injunction, but the state’s supreme court upheld the injunction temporarily in early June. The project would have constructed the Gulf Shores Bridge approximately one mile from where the Beach Express Bridge, one of two existing options to access Pleasure Island, currently crosses.
