Huey P. Long Bridge (Jefferson Parish)
| Huey P. Long Bridge | |
|---|---|
The Huey Long Bridge in 2007, when widening work had just begun.
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| Coordinates | 29°56′39″N 90°10′08″W / 29.94417°N 90.16889°W |
| Carries | 6 lanes of  US 902 tracks of the NOPB |
| 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) |
| History | |
| Construction cost | $13.4 million |
| Opened | December 1935 (widened June 2013) |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 43,000 (2008) |
The Huey P. Long Bridge, 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.
Opened in December 1935, the bridge was named for the late Governor Huey P. Long, who had been 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 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. It was designed by Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski.
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 3.3-meter (11-foot) lanes in each direction, with inside and outside shoulders. Prior to the expansion, there were two 2.7-meter (9-foot) lanes in each direction with no shoulders.
in 2014, a writer in 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."
The widest clean span is 790 feet (240 m) long and sits 135 feet (41 m) above the water. There are three navigation channels below the bridge, the widest being 750 feet (230 m). The distinctive rail structure is 22,996 feet (7,009 m) long and extends as a rail viaduct well into the city. It has sometimes been described as the longest rail bridge in the US, but the nearby Norfolk Southern Lake Pontchartrain Bridge, at 5.8 miles (9.3 km), is considerably longer. The highway structure is 8,076 feet (2,462 m) long with extremely steep grades on both sides. As originally constructed, each roadway deck was a precarious 18 feet (5.5 m) wide, with two nine-foot lanes; but because of the railroad component, it is unusually flat. Normally, bridges its height have a hump, but this bridge was designed flat to facilitate rail traffic.
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Wikipedia