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Labor Day walk across Mackinac Bridge confirmed for 2018

Cory Seeman
/
https://flic.kr/p/a1Wvct

The Labor Day walk across the Mackinac bridge was greenlit for 2018 at a Mackinac Bridge Authority meeting November 20.

Officials with the authority say the high cost of organizing the bridge walk had raised questions about whether it should keep going.

Bob Sweeney is with the Mackinac Bridge Authority. He said the authority will no longer handle bussing for the walk.

“We’re still going to spend over 300-thousand in staffing and providing porta johns on our site, various other equipment and materials that we need to provide the event itself.”

Sweeney said the additional cost of bussing last year was between 200-400 thousand dollars.

“We’re going to save a significant amount of money that we put into bussing every year. That was one of the things we wanted to control this year: our increased costs to provide bussing across the bridge was one of the things we needed to change up for the future.”

Sweeney said the authority has reached out to St. Ignace, Mackinac City, and Mackinac Island to discuss who will cover the bussing and how it will work.

He said a decision on bussing is expected to be announced at the next board meeting on February 16th.