Daphne Gets Paint, a Wider I-10 and a Rising Toll Before It Sees the New Bridge

The ceremonial gold shovels went into the ground on Friday, October 2, at Cooper Riverside Park in downtown Mobile. Most of the $3.2 billion Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project will stay on that side of the water. Daphne's share is new paint on the old Bayway, plus a separate and much smaller contract on the stretch of I-10 between Exit 35 and Exit 38. Then there's the toll. Its price went up before a single new lane opened, and it is built to keep going up.

That third piece will cost Eastern Shore drivers the most over time. To see why, start with what is physically headed to this side of the bay.

The Bayway you cross in 2031 is the Bayway you cross today

Phase One builds a six-lane cable-stayed bridge across the Mobile River. It starts near I-10 and Virginia Street in Mobile and rises 215 feet. The bridge meets the existing Bayway near the Tensaw River interchange. From there, the Bayway gets restriped from two lanes to three in each direction as far east as the U.S. 98 exit in Daphne. The extra lane comes from the shoulders, which are being removed.

About one mile of the Bayway will actually be rebuilt, and that mile is where it connects to the new bridge. AL.com places that tie-in near the Tensaw River interchange, at the far end from Daphne. A brand-new Bayway structure has been pushed to a future phase. ALDOT says that split happened because rising construction costs made building the bridge and a new Bayway at the same time "financially unachievable."

ALDOT hasn't published a date or order for the restriping. It also hasn't said which Baldwin County interchanges get work under Phase One beyond a general promise of corridor improvements in both counties. So the Bayway near Daphne has no announced work schedule yet.

The construction that lands closer to home

The project with a contract, a price and a deadline is ALDOT's NH-I010(352). It adds one lane in each direction on I-10 from Exit 35 at U.S. 98 to Exit 38 at AL-181. Officially it covers 3.452 miles, from half a mile east of the Bayway's eastern end to half a mile past the SR-181 interchange. ALDOT says it needs no new right of way. The interstate stays open while crews work, though there may be intermittent lane closures.

This widening isn't part of the bridge budget. It was included in the bridge project's environmental review years ago, and SR-181 has long been accepted as where the project ends. In July, the Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planning Organization put the cost at about $44 million. The bids came in lower than that.

APAC-Alabama is the apparent low bidder. That sheet is a bid tabulation, not a final award. The contract gives a completion deadline of September 29, 2028. In July, ALDOT Southwest Region engineer Matt Ericksen said the project was "targeted to begin in September." As of early October, no start date had been confirmed publicly.

Here's how the calendar lines up for anyone driving between U.S. 98 and Malbis:

1. September 25, 2026. The Exit 35 to Exit 38 widening goes to bid, and Gov. Kay Ivey gives the bridge team notice to proceed.
2. October 2, 2026. Groundbreaking in Mobile, with the Kiewit Massman Traylor design-build team mobilizing.
3. September 29, 2028. Contract deadline for the six-lane section to reach SR-181.
4. Late 2031. Projected opening of the new bridge and the rest of Phase One. Tolling begins then.

If the widening contract stays on schedule, the six-lane section in Daphne will be finished about three years before the bridge that is supposed to feed it.

The toll moved before the concrete did

When local leaders revived the project in 2021, they set a cap. Passenger vehicles with an ALGO transponder would pay no more than $2.50. Planning organizations on both sides of Mobile Bay formally adopted that framework in 2022, and ALDOT agreed to keep toll rates frozen at their introductory levels. That cap mattered. The 2019 version of the project collapsed after an anti-toll movement fought a $6 one-way toll and a plan to toll the Wallace Tunnel too.

"We did that until we couldn't," ALDOT spokesman Tony Harris told FOX10. The per-trip rate is now $3, and the unlimited monthly pass went from $40 to $60. The bigger change is the escalator. For the first 10 years after tolling starts, rates rise each year by 5 percent or by the inflation rate for Southern urban consumers, whichever is higher. The $60 monthly pass is protected from those increases for the first 10 years. Jack Burrell, who chairs the Eastern Shore MPO, told FOX10, "I was not aware of any escalation clauses."

The table below uses the 5 percent floor, the slowest increase the contract allows. It assumes tolling starts in late 2031 as projected.

The ALGO rates in the table are the floor. If inflation runs above 5 percent in any year, they climb faster. Since the pass price stays put while the per-trip rate climbs, more drivers will reach the point where the pass costs less each year. Someone who drives across and back on 10 workdays a month gets there in the first year. Drivers without an ALGO account pay much more. A non-Alabama transponder such as SunPass is charged $7.70, and plate billing is $15.40 per crossing. ALGO transponders will be free when they're first issued.

There will be no tolls at all during construction. The Causeway, the Wallace Tunnel, the Bankhead Tunnel and the Africatown Bridge all stay toll-free after the bridge opens. For Daphne drivers, U.S. 90/98 across the Causeway and the Wallace Tunnel will remain free when the new bridge opens, and the price gap between the free and tolled routes grows every year the escalator runs.

The next pinch point is already mapped

Once the Bayway carries six lanes and I-10 is six lanes to SR-181, the open question is what happens east of Malbis. ALDOT counts 64,919 vehicles a day on I-10 west of the Route 181 interchange. That drops to 57,736 at Route 59 and 51,730 just east of it. The mayors of Daphne, Spanish Fort and Loxley want six lanes extended past Route 59 to the Baldwin Beach Express interchange at Buc-ee's.

"We don't want to shift the bottleneck east so it's a Baldwin County problem," Spanish Fort Mayor Brad Bass told AL.com in July.

Ericksen said six lanes toward the Beach Express "is being looked at." Anything east of Route 181 will need its own separate reviews. Loxley Mayor Richard Teal said that three to four years ago, each section east of 181 was costing around $57 million. A proposed new interchange at Baldwin County 13, between the U.S. 98/90 exit in Daphne and Route 181, is earlier still. So far it is a $3 million line item for preliminary engineering in the MPO's Transportation Improvement Plan.

Here is where things stand in Daphne. The Exit 35 to Exit 38 widening is bid and due by late September 2028. The Bayway restriping has no published date. The bridge and the toll arrive together, projected for late 2031, and the County 13 interchange and any widening past Malbis are still in planning.

If you're curious how a six-lane I-10 between U.S. 98 and SR-181, or the gap between the toll and the free Causeway, might affect your own street or a home you're weighing, the Bo Nichols team is glad to talk it through. Book a consultation and bring your questions about the corridor.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.