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The 'Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge' (also known as the 'Wilson Bridge') is a bascule bridge that spans the Potomac River between the independent city of Alexandria, Virginia and Oxon Hill in Prince George's County, Maryland. The bridge is one of only a handful of drawbridges in the U.S. Interstate Highway System, and contains the only portion of the Interstate system that is owned and operated by the federal government.
The Wilson Bridge carries Interstate 95 and Interstate 495 (the Capital Beltway). The drawbridge on the original span opened approximately 260 times a year, causing frequent disruption to traffic on the bridge, which carried approximately 250,000 cars each day.^[1] The new, taller span will require fewer openings.

Contents

History

President Woodrow Wilson

Capacity and maintenance

Replacement facilities

References

External links

History

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge was planned and built as part of the Interstate Highway System created by Congress in 1956. Construction of the bridge began in the late 1950s, and it opened to traffic on December 28, 1961. Edith Wilson, the widow of President Wilson, died that very morning; she was supposed to have been the guest of honor at the bridge's dedication ceremony.^[2] The bridge's west abutment in Virginia, and the remaining majority of it is within Maryland (because that section of the Potomac River is within Maryland's borders). About 300 feet (90 m) of the western mid-span portion of the bridge crosses the tip of the southernmost corner of the District of Columbia. As originally built, the bridge had six traffic lanes, and was 5,900 feet (1,798 m) long. The structure was built as a bascule bridge to allow large, ocean-going vessels access to the port facilities of Washington, D.C.

President Woodrow Wilson

Main articles: Woodrow Wilson

The bridge is named in honor of the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who, when elected in 1912, was serving as the Governor of New Jersey, but who had been a native of Staunton, Virginia. While he was President, Mr. Wilson reportedly spent an average of two hours a day riding in his automobile to relax, or to "loosen his mind from the problems before him."
President Wilson was an advocate of automobile and highway improvements in the United States. In 1916, he stated "My interest i n good roads is . . . to bind communities together and open their intercourse, so that it will flow with absolute freedom and facility."

Capacity and maintenance

Due to unanticipated circumstances, the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge had— out of necessity— exceeded all expectations of the highway planners. The bridge was originally designed to handle 75,000 vehicles a day. Due to substantial growth in and around the Washington metropolitan area, travel demand across the bridge had grown to 200,000 vehicles a day, more than twice its original design capacity. The bridge had serious and well-documented maintenance problems and underwent continuous patchwork maintenance since the 1970s. It was completely re-decked in 1983.
One of the reasons for the excess traffic on the old bridge is that the eastern half of the Capital Beltway carries I-95 traffic between points south of Washington and points north of Washington. It was originally planned in the 1960s and 1970s that some of the north-to-south traffic from outside the Washington area would travel through the city on the proposed North Central Freeway. Construction of this urban freeway was subject to considerable neighborhood and political dispute and the project was ultimately canceled (see I-395). This resulted in the main route of I-95 being forced to combine with that of I-495 over the bridge and had the effect of more than doubling the forecasted bridge traffic.
Furthermore, because housing costs in Prince George's County, Maryland are much lower than in Northern Virginia — which has boomed with enormous job growth in recent decades — tens of thousands of workers commute daily over the bridge, a situation not anticipated when it was constructed. After the highway on both sides of the bridge was widened to eight lanes, the six-lane bridge became a daily bottleneck as heavy traffic slowed in order to funnel into fewer lanes.
Two particular incidents demonstrated the bottleneck status of the Wilson Bridge. On Veterans Day 1987, a snowstorm snarled traffic so badly that many commuters ran out of gas and ended up spending the night in their cars on the bridge. In November 1998, the bridge was closed for several hours during the afternoon rush hour when Ivin L. Pointer jumped off the bridge after a seven-hour standoff with police. Pointer survived the fall.^[3]

Replacement facilities

Maryland, Virginia, and federal highway officials have been confronting the problems and exploring alternatives for many years. After considerable study and public debate, it was determined that a plan doubling the capacity and increasing the height of the draw portion to reduce the frequencies of openings at the same location offered the best solutions.
Construction began on the replacement facilities and approaches in 1999. The existing Wilson Bridge is being replaced by two new side-by-side drawbridges with a total of 12 lanes and 70 feet of vertical navigational clearance at the draw span. The first new six-lane Potomac River bridge opened for northbound Outer Loop traffic on June 10, 2006, with only minor delays (the lane striping of the bridge and approach did not match up initially). The first car to cross was a Toyota Corolla.^[4][5]
Traffic from the Inner Loop of the Beltway was rerouted to the future Outer Loop express lanes for a two-year interim basis on July 16 2006 at midnight. The original 1961 bridge was originally to be demolished at 11:59 p.m., on 28 August 2006, to make room for completion of the second six-lane bridge (the future permanent home of the Inner Loop) located between the original bridge and the new Outer Loop span. Local commuter Daniel Ruefly was given the honor of initiating the detonation after he won a contest where he was judged the driver to have suffered the most from the bridge's congestion.^[6] The detonation was later delayed to 12:15 a.m., and again to 12:25. Finally, the bridge was demolished at around 12:35. The air space above the bridge, and the Beltway in both directions, were both closed during the detonation. The second bridge span is expected to be completed by May 2008, with the majority of the highway project completed by 2009, and the upgraded Telegraph Road interchange by 2011.
The new spans are 20 feet (6 meters) higher, which is tall enough to allow most boats to pass underneath without having to raise the bridge, thus eliminating the large traffic tie-ups that opening the span causes, though quite tall ships will still require the opening of the bridge. It is hoped that the number of openings will be reduced from about 260 a year to about 65 a year, according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which must cooperate with the US Coast Guard about bridge openings. The enormous bridge replacement project also includes an extensive redesign and reconstruction of the Capital Beltway as it approaches the new bridge from both the Maryland and Virginia sides. The new bridge will also have a pedestrian/bicycle trail.^[7][8] The entire cost of the project is estimated at $2.5 billion.
After the completion of the Wilson Bridge project, the State of Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia will become the joint owners of the completed bridge, and both states will exercise joint responsibility and oversight of bridge activities, maintenance and operations.^[9] The District of Columbia, a jurisdiction that once had ownership rights to the 1961 Wilson Bridge span, will relinquish future ownership rights and responsibility for the new bridge. Additionally, the District will grant a permanent easement to Maryland and Virginia for the portion of the bridge located within its boundaries.

References

1. New road could take the strain off D.C. Beltway Robert Preer
2. From Its Hapless Beginning, Span's Reputation Only Fell Stephen Ginsberg
3. Jumper on Bridge Causes Gridlock
4. Wilson Bridge Span Open Early; Now to Do It All Over Again Stephanie McCrummen
5. A Cry of 'This Is Awesome!' As Cars Cruise New Span
6. US commuter blows up bottleneck
7. Brochure from the dedication of the eastbound span May 18, 2006
8. Woodrow Wilson Bridge Replacement National Capital Planning Commission, August 5, 2004
9. Attachment V - Agreement covering the ownership, operation, inspection, maintenance, and rehabilitation of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge. (June 15 2001). The Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project. Retrieved on August 7 2007 (in English; Adobe Acrobat Reader required for viewing).

External links

★ Official website for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project

★ Woodrow Wilson Bridge (I-495 and I-95), by Roads to the Future

★ President Wilson: Motorist Extraordinaire, 1916 article from ''Northwest Motorist''

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