BGuthrie Photos: Woodrow Wilson Bridge -- Walk

Woodrow Wilson Bridge -- Walk:

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Description of Pictures: I had no idea you could walk across the Wilson Bridge!

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[1] WILSOW_140927_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] WILSOW_140927_005_STITCH.JPG

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[6] WILSOW_140927_013.JPG	[7] WILSOW_140927_018.JPG	[8] WILSOW_140927_023.JPG
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[27] WILSOW_140927_122.JPG	[28] WILSOW_140927_127.JPG	[29] WILSOW_140927_129.JPG
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WILSOW_140927_069.JPG: Masonic Temple
2. WILSOW_140927_075.JPG: A Tale of Three Jurisdictions Did you know that you traverse the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia when you cross this bridge? The brass lines in the walkway mark the boundaries. They also commemorate the cooperation required to build this bridge. Follow the numbers to find out how this intersection came to be... 1. Virginia was the first colony. The first British land grant in the new world was extended by the King to the Virginia Company of London, a collection of court favorites that had financed ocean exploration. Captain John Smith's map of 1612 laid claim to vast territory that stretched from Florida to Canada, and west to the Pacific Ocean. 2. Maryland was established by a land grant to Lord Baltimore. After a single winter in Newfoundland, George Calvert, First Lord of Baltimore, wrote the British King requesting land in a warmer climate. In 1632, Lord Baltimore and his heirs were granted territory in Virginia to found "the province of Mariland in memory and honor of the Queene." 3. Virginia and Maryland ceded land for the District of Columbia. In 1790, George Washington selected a site along the Potomac River for the capital of the emerging nation. A ten-mile square was laid out, straddling the river, with this cornerstone marking the southern tip. The cornerstone is still standing at the Alexandria end of the bridge, near the lighthouse in Jones Point. 4. Congress returns land to Virginia. George Washington perhaps silencing criticism of his role in locating the seat of government so close to his vast landholdings, insisted that no federal building be sited on the Virginia side of the District. The city of Alexandria, therefore, never benefited from the growth of the federal city. In 1846, Congress agreed to return all Virginia lands to Virginia, eliciting "great rejoicing and cannon fire."
3. WILSOW_140927_085.JPG: Alexandria
4. WILSOW_140927_140.JPG: A New Nation's Capital: Following the Revolutionary War, the task of locating the capital of the new nation fell to George Washington. He traveled widely investigating other options, such as Philadelphia and Trenton, and ultimately returned to familiar ground, a site on the Potomac River near his home at Mount Vernon. "Early in his life General Washington contemplated the opening of [the Potomack], from tide-water to its source, so as to make it navigable for such vessels as were suitable for carrying the produce of the country to the shipping ports below." -- Tobias Lear, personal secretary to George Washington, 1793 Choosing a site: George Washington's experience of surveying the western wilderness as a young man convinced him that control of the interior of the country would be critical to the new nation. As a site for the nation's capital, the Potomac River was not only midway between northern and southern states, but was also one of the few rivers to penetrate the Allegheny Mountains and access the vast resources of the Mississippi River Valley. Washington hoped that goods traveling downriver to the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria would transform the capital into a thriving commercial center. Making plans: The new federal district, carved from land donated by Virginia and Maryland, took the form of a ten-mile square. Washington hired a Frenchman, Pierre Charles L'Enfant to design the streets and monuments of the capital city within the district. His grandiose plan featured broad avenues arranged in radial fashion to frame long vistas of monuments and public buildings. "No nation had e er before the the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding on the spot where their Capital City should be fixed... the plan should be drawn on such a scale as to leave room for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the nation will permit it to pursue at any period however remote." -- L'Enfant to George Washington, 1789
5. WILSOW_140927_145.JPG: "Early in his life General Washington contemplated the opening of [the Potomack], from tide-water to its source, so as to make it navigable for such vessels as were suitable for carrying the produce of the country to the shipping ports below." -- Tobias Lear, personal secretary to George Washington, 1793
6. WILSOW_140927_175.JPG: National Harbor
7. WILSOW_140927_193.JPG: Edwards Air Force Base
8. WILSOW_140927_198.JPG: National Airport
9. WILSOW_140927_265.JPG: Each of the sections of the bridge are numbered
10. WILSOW_140927_272.JPG: Bridge expansion section
Wikipedia Description: Woodrow Wilson Bridge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. The new, taller span will require fewer openings.

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. The bridge's west abutment is 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 article: 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 in 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.

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 old Wilson Bridge was 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.
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