Woodrow Wilson Bridge

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge is a drawbridge over the Potomac River connecting the independent city of Alexandria, Virginia and Prince George's County, Maryland. The bridge carries Interstate 95 and Interstate 495, and is the southern Potomac River crossing of the Capital Beltway. However, the draw feature is seldom used due to the low number of ocean-going vessels desiring to cross under it and the tremendous disruptions in traffic that opening it causes.

History

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge was planned and built as part of the Interstate Highway System created by the U.S. Congress in 1956. Construction of the bridge was begun in the late 1950s, and it opened to traffic on December 28, 1961. The bridge has its west abutment in Virginia, and its east abutment in Maryland, and about 100 feet of the mid-span portion of the bridge crosses the tip of the southernmost corner of the District of Columbia. The bridge has 6 traffic lanes, and is 5,900 feet long. The structure was built as a bascule bridge to allow large, ocean-going vessels access to the port facilities of Washington, DC.

President Woodrow Wilson

It was named in honor of the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who when elected in 1912 was serving as Governor of New Jersey but was a native of Staunton, Virginia. While he was President, Wilson reportedly spent an average of two hours per day riding in his automobile to relax or "loosen his mind from the problems before him." This is a hallmark behavior of modern persons with Attention Deficit Disorder, which Wilson is believed to have had.

President Wilson was advocate of the automobile and highway improvements in the United States. In 1916, he stated "My interest in good roads is ...to bind communities together and open their intercourse so that it will flow with absolute freedom and facility."

Over-capacity, wear and maintenance issues

The amount of traffic on his namesake bridge would undoubtedly amaze President Wilson today. In fact, it has exceeded all expectations of the highway planners.

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial 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 has grown to 200,000 vehicles per day, more than twice its original design capacity. The bridge has serious and well-documented maintenance problems and has undergone continuous patchwork maintenance since the 1970s. It was completely re-decked in 1983. The bridge remains in distress, in part because the large volume of traffic that passes over it daily.

Replacement facilities

Maryland, Virginia, and federal highway officials 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 Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge will be replaced by 2 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 6-lane Potomac River bridge is expected to open for traffic in 2005, and the entire project is expected to be complete in 2008. The existing bridge will be demolished and removed. The new spans will be 20 feet higher, which is tall enough to allow most boats to pass underneath without having to use a bascule, thus eliminating the large traffic tie-ups that opening the span causes, though very tall ships will still necessitate opening the bridge. The number of openings will be reduced by approximately 50%, to about 65 per year. The enormous bridge replacement project also includes an extensive redesign and reconstruction of the Capital Beltway as it approches the new bridge from both the Maryland and Virgina sides.

The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge is one of only a small number of drawbridges on the Interstate Highway System.

External links

• Official Website for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge
• Roads to the Future website
• President Wilson: Motorist Extraordinaire, 1916 article from Northwest Motorist