Dean Goldsborough sells boats for a living in Crisfield. But when he closes a deal with a customer from Maryland's western shore, he still depends on a circuitous road network to make the delivery.

Fast forward to a future scenario in which a gleaming causeway — a true engineering marvel — bisects the Chesapeake Bay at the state's southernmost latitude.

The one-way trip from Somerset County to St. Mary's County is no longer a four-hour jaunt up one coast and down the other. Now, it can be made in a matter of about 45 minutes.

“From a business and economical standpoint, it couldn’t come fast enough for me," Goldsborough says of this hypothetical future. "It would be nothing but an economic gain for the financial people and the businesses here in the city of Crisfield.”

But is it possible?

If you take the Maryland Transportation Authority at its word, it could happen. The owner of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is scouring the entire length of the bay for a new crossing it hopes will relieve congestion on the two existing spans.

“That’s a pretty broad area obviously," said MDTA spokesman John Sales. "We don’t want to show favor over one area or another for a future bay crossing. Everything is on the table.”

Talk of creating a third crossing has been echoing on both sides of the bay since not long after the second Bay Bridge was completed in 1973. The $5 million National Environmental Policy Act study, though, represents the first tangible step toward making it happen.

More:Where should a new Chesapeake Bay Bridge be built? Maryland asks the public

The agency is barely a year into an analysis that is expected to last until 2020. Engineers don't expect to start identifying specific corridor alternatives until next winter.

But is a link to Somerset County plausible?

On the one hand, Somerset offers at least three potential bridge landings, with peninsulas stretching well into the bay at Crisfield, Deal Island and Rumbly.

It's likely the only viable option on the Lower Shore because Wicomico County's western approach is screened by southern Dorchester County and its environmentally sensitive marshlands.

Environmental concerns are fewer in Somerset, said Donnie Drewer, a Crisfield native and retired State Highway Administration district engineer for the Eastern Shore.

But a crossing there would have to jump one of the widest parts of the Chesapeake. That would almost certainly add several billion dollars to its cost versus alternatives along the Mid- and Upper Shore, he said.

“It would be probably be nice for the county, but I don’t think it’s feasible at all," said Drewer, who worked at the agency for 55 years. "It’s not too long because you have the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (in Virginia), but it’s a right long shot there."

The MDTA analysis will likely hinge on traffic counts — how many drivers engineers expect to use the route, Drewer added.

Would travelers from Washington, Baltimore and Pennsylvania use such a southern route? If not, would there be enough traffic between southern Maryland and the Lower Shore to justify its existence?

Once again, Drewer is a skeptic.

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"If you put it down to Somerset County to Crisfield or Deal Island or wherever, I don’t know where the traffic would come from," he said.

If the width of the bay rules out a bridge for Somerset County, the area may still be a candidate for a different type of crossing, Sales said. When he says "everything is on the table," that also it could take the form of a transit service or a car ferry like the one that zips between Lewes, Delaware, and Cape May, New Jersey.

As recently as a decade ago, Somerset was abuzz with hope in a car ferry connection with Reedsville, Virginia. The idea’s biggest backers were Charles McClenahan, Somerset’s state delegate at the time, and Fred Lankford, head of Lankford-Sysco Food Services just north of Pocomoke City.

Two ferry operators expressed interest in the idea. But several studies by both Maryland and Virginia transportation officials showed the service wouldn’t be profitable.

The ferry also faced strong opposition in southern Maryland, where local government officials warned that through traffic would worsen existing traffic jams.

Bill Chambers was the head of the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce before he accepted the same position earlier this year for Salisbury’s trade group. Don’t expect southern Maryland’s gripes about congestion to have lifted, he said.

“Right now 2017, Dec. 15, there’s not any political will in Calvert County to have more traffic coming through that place,” Chambers said. “You could have state and local government throw billions of dollars at them and say, ‘We’re going to take care of it.’ And they won’t go for it.”

Which is too bad, as he sees it, because both shores could benefit from a shorter connection.

“From a business perspective, we’re getting quite a few inquiries about businesses looking to locate here from the other side because doing business over here has become rather expensive and unreliable because of the current spans,” Chambers said.

Michael Descoteaux and his wife, Melissa, own Chesapeake Jewelers in Princess Anne, but they travel to festivals across the bay at least a half-dozen times a year. A bridge would be too costly on both environmental and financial fronts, he said.

A ferry, on the other hand?

“I could see a ferry taking three hours off” the current drive, he said.

A southern crossing may not only remove the bottleneck at the existing bridges but on Route 50 along the peninsula, said Randy Laird, president of the Somerset Board of County Commissioners. Route 113 would emerge as an alternative for such drivers, he said.

There hasn’t been much talk locally about the bridge study, Laird added, but he’s willing to listen.

“If the data and all put that it would work for Somerset, we would take that under consideration,” he said. But “we haven’t gone as far as taking a vote on it.”

Any analysis of a bridge scenario wouldn’t stop at the shoreline, Drewer said. Engineers will consider the road network beyond each side of the expanse and whether it can handle the traffic and the potential environmental consequences.

That would shine a spotlight on Route 413, the two-lane highway that connects Crisfield with Route 13 — and was recently renamed in Drewer’s honor. That road could be dualized with relative ease, he said. But the protected lands along the way to Deal Island would present a huge obstacle to its candidacy.

A Chesapeake crossing — whatever form it takes — would transform Crisfield the way the Bay Bridge changed Kent Island from a sleepy fishing village to a tourism hot spot, said Goldsborough, the boat dealer.

“We’re probably the last one that would ever get it because we’re small and don’t have much clout. But you can always dream big,” he said.

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