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Huey P. Long Bridge | |
|---|---|
&sq=Envato&lang=en&file=File:Hueylongbridge.jpg) The Huey Long Bridge in 2007, when widening work had just begun. | |
| Coordinates | 29°56′39″N 90°10′08″W / 29.94417°N 90.16889°W |
| Carries |  US 90 and New Orleans Public Belt Railroad |
| Crosses | Mississippi River |
| Locale | Jefferson Parish, Louisiana |
| Maintained by | New Orleans Public Belt Railroad |
| ID number | 022600060100001 |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Cantilever truss bridge |
| Total length | 8,076 feet (2,462 m) (road) 22,996 feet (7,009 m) (rail) |
| Longest span | 790 feet (241 m) |
| Clearance below | 153 feet (47 m) |
| No. of lanes | 6 |
| Rail characteristics | |
| No. of tracks | 2 |
| History | |
| Construction cost | $13.4 million[1][2] (equivalent to $234 million in 2023 dollars) |
| Opened | December 1935 (widened June 2013) |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 43,000 (2008) 18.9 trains per day (as of 2014[update])[3] |
| Location | |
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The Huey P. Long Bridge,[5] located in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, is a cantilevered steel through-truss bridge that carries a two-track railroad line over the Mississippi River at mile 106.1, with three lanes of US 90 on each side of the central tracks. It is several kilometers upriver from the city of New Orleans. The East Bank entrance is at Elmwood, Louisiana, and the West Bank at Bridge City.
Opened in December 1935, the bridge was named for the late Governor Huey P. Long, who was assassinated on September 8 of that year. The bridge was the first Mississippi River span built in Louisiana and the 29th along the length of the river. It was designed by Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski and is designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.[6]
On June 16, 2013, a $1.2 billion widening project by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development was completed and opened to motorists. The bridge now consists of three 11-foot (3.4 m) lanes in each direction, with inside and outside shoulders. Prior to the expansion, there were two 9-foot (2.7 m) lanes in each direction with no shoulders. In both cases, the road lanes flanked the twin railroad tracks contained within the truss.
in 2014, a writer at The New Yorker described the bridge as "a structure so vaulting and high that it seems to extend from one white, towering Gulf Coast cloud to the next."[7]
- ^ Betsy Swanson (2003). Historic Jefferson Parish: From Shore to Shore. Pelican Publishing. p. 100.
- ^ Andrea Shaw (June 13, 2013), $1.2 billion Huey P. Long Bridge widening to end steering-wheel death grip, Nola, retrieved August 7, 2014
- ^ Missouri Department of Transportation (2017). The Merchants Bridge rehabilitation program (PDF) (Grant application). Figure 10: Rail Traffic Volumes Overlaid with Seismic Hazard, 2014.
- ^ Nguyên, Trang (August 2, 2014). "Tên đường thành phố". Trẻ Weekly Magazine (in Vietnamese). Garland, Texas. Archived from the original on November 18, 2018. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
- ^ The bridge is also known by local Vietnamese Americans as the Huỳnh Phi Long bridge, a phono-semantic matching of Huey P. Long's name in the style of a Vietnamese name.[4]
- ^ Marking, Tonja Koob; Snape, Jennifer (2013). Huey P. Long Bridge. Images of America. Charleston, South Carolina: Acadia Publishing. p. 11. ISBN 9781439643457.
- ^ Frazier, Ian (June 2, 2014). "Streetscape: Do Not Cross". The New Yorker. p. 26.