A proposed bridge that divided local elected officials, environmentalists and residents for nearly a decade might just be back on the front burner.

Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn has been asking the Grand Traverse County Road Commission and others to reconsider a bridge over the Boardman River to connect Hartman and Hammond roads.

He says it should replace a proposed Cass River bridge project, which he calls a waste of $3 million.

A Hartman-Hammond bridge would create a real east-west alternative for traffic to bypass Traverse City and hopefully ease some of the traffic on South Airport Road, Division Street, West Grandview Parkway and other congested thoroughfares, according to Korn.

“If we were to establish a bridge at the Hartman-Hammond corridor, we would see a huge decrease on South Airport, basically through the Logan Valley,” he says.

The Hartman-Hammond bridge proposal was controversial for years until the road commission scrapped the idea in 2004.

The suggestion still brings out passionate opinions on both sides.

Opponents have long expressed concerns that it would cross the Boardman River at a relatively pristine and wild area, and damage it by filling in the valley with dirt almost up to the river bank. That would severely limit animal migration, says Kelly Thayer, a long-time environmental activist and opponent of the bridge.

Runoff from dirt, road salt and automotive fluids would also damage the river and surrounding wetlands, Thayer adds.

“It would cause terrible damage to the environment,” he says.

Rather than one bridge to solve all the traffic problems, Thayer advocates several less-expensive and smaller steps. Those could include widening Keystone/Beitner Road in spots to make it more of a “bypass” route; combining business driveways on South Airport to make for fewer curb cuts and fewer traffic slow-downs; and signal changes to better orchestrate the flow of traffic.

Korn’s latest statement to the road commission, sent last week, cites traffic figures to advance his case. He says South Airport north of Hartman and Hammond is already carrying 20 percent more traffic than it was designed for.

While he believes a Hartman-Hammond crossing would be well used, studies have been inconclusive about how many motorists would utilize it. One study predicted somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 cars per day – too wide of a gap to make the prediction useful, Korn and others agree.

Meanwhile, about $3.1 million has been allocated from the state for the Cass project, with the requirement of a five percent local match.

The current Cass Road crossing is a one-lane stretch dating back to 1930 that alternates traffic directions using lights and vehicle sensors. Some 7,000 cars and trucks use it daily. That’s expected to grow by 500-1,000 vehicles per day with a new bridge, an increase Korn believes is minimal and the reason he says it’s a waste.

Road Commission Manager Jim Cook agrees with Korn about the need for a Hartman-Hammond bridge or something similar close to it. Yet he says there is a real need for the Cass bridge, adding that it will be used by local traffic rather than regional and pass-through traffic and that there’s no alternative at the moment.