Traffic relief is on the way for Manatee County drivers.

Construction of the new Fort Hamer Bridge has officially started. A ground-breaking ceremony was held Thursday.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for a long while,” Parrish resident Jim Thomas said. “I didn’t know if it would ever happen.”

Once it’s finished, the new bridge will extend 2,300 feet across the Manatee River, connecting Fort Hamer Road to Upper Manatee River Road in Bradenton.

"The bridge is going to open up Lakewood Ranch and Parrish and it’s going to connect a lot of people from the Schroder Manatee area to people in the Parrish area,” county commissioner Larry Bustle said.

The new connector will also hopefully help relieve heavy congestion and traffic on the county’s two other bridges in addition to I-75.

“It takes you an hour to get downtown at a certain hour,” said Thomas. “This will help, I hope.”

Bustle said with so many new developments coming to Parrish and East Bradenton, the new bridge is needed more than ever. He said they’ve been talking about building the bridge for years, but other projects took precedence.

“Manatee County Commission in 1909 voted to build the bridge at Fort Hamer,” said Bustle. “So, it’s taken 106 years to get it built.”

The new connector will also hopefully help relieve heavy congestion and traffic on the county’s two other bridges in addition to I-75.

The cost to build the new bridge is more than $23 million.

The two-lane bridge will have bike lanes, improved shoulders, and a sidewalk on the east side of the bridge.

Construction is expected to take two years.