Orange Beach, AL. — One thing is certain about traffic and roads in Orange Beach: changes are coming.

One thing that is absolutely uncertain is what those changes might entail.

Always at the forefront is the hope for a Wolf Bay bridge from Josephine to Alabama 161 in Orange Beach near Doc’s Seafood Shack. And a widening of Canal Road would be a nice addition.

But perhaps the surest bet, and the key factor in whether either of the other two occurs, is a north-south route from the end of the Foley Beach Express to Alabama 180, the beach road.

“There’s a whole bunch of horse-trading and negotiation going on,” Mayor Tony Kennon said. “So it’s really hard to discuss it right now. The governor’s desire to have a convention center is going to require a north-south artery through the state park somewhere.”

Even as all of this is on the table, Orange Beach Community Development Director Kit Alexander believes a traffic study is way overdue and may help as all these ideas are swirling round.

“As everybody heard over the summer we clearly had some traffic issues,” she said. “It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. I’m so glad we have traffic issues, but it’s definitely something we need to address.”

Alexander says the current study is five years old and now is the time to commission a new study. The City Council is currently considering hiring consultants to study the city’s traffic, but the motion was tabled for further study at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I had a couple of councilmembers that wanted to come in and review our study and where we were relative to the previous master plan that we had conducted four or five years ago,” Alexander said. “They just want to be sure they are up to speed before they vote on it.”

“At this point in time I think the traffic study will help tell us what might be the best direction to go,” Kennon said. “In the interim, the horse trading and negotiations continue.”

Gov. Robert Bentley wants to put a new convention center on the beach in the state park a road directly to it from the Foley Beach Express would be essential to the success of the center.

But with that road, will the widening of Canal Road be necessary? Will a Wolf Bay Bridge be necessary?

“The toll bridge is a part of this,” Kennon said. “We’d love to see a way where that toll is completely eliminated for our local folks — that’s part of the negotiations. Or at least significantly reduced. I don’t want to give away all of our hand, but that’s what’s going on.”

But all of it turns on whether or not the north-south road gets built.

“Between the Wolf Bay Bridge and the cross island parkway, if those two were to come to fruition, there would be no need to widen Canal Road,” Kennon said. “Or the funds wouldn’t be there to do all of them. We’re sort of waiting to see how all this plays out. Right now all three are in play.”

In the meanwhile, consultants Hutchison, Moore & Rauch will likely be hired to conduct a traffic study identify and assess current needs for Orange Beach.

“We’ve had discussions with HMR who is the consultant on the Wolf Bay Bridge and the cross-island connector,” Alexander said. “They also did the alternate analysis on the Foley Beach Express. So they have quite a bit of data, access to the data. So we would like to utilize this consultant to do an overall analysis of what are needs are with regard to our transportation.”

Money for the study is not on budget but Alexander said there is enough in the professional service fees account to fund the study.

It’ll take about 90 days to have some results from the study’s two-step process. Afterward the firm will make recommendations to help improve traffic flow throughout the city.