Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge (Connecticut)

Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge
The nearly-complete bridge in August 2015
Carries	Ten lanes of I-95 / Conn. Turnpike
Crosses	Quinnipiac River
Locale	New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Maintained by	Connecticut Department of Transportation
Characteristics
Design	Extradosed bridge
Total length	1,443.2 metres (4,735 ft)
Width	55.4 metres (182 ft)
Height	45.7 metres (150 ft)
Longest span	157.0 metres (515.1 ft)
Clearance below	18.3 metres (60 ft)
Opened	1958 (original span) reconstructed 2005-2015

(Old) Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge
Q Bridge with the Tomlinson Lift Bridge behind it
Coordinates	41°17′55″N 72°54′14″W / 41.29861°N 72.90389°W / 41.29861; -72.90389Coordinates: 41°17′55″N 72°54′14″W / 41.29861°N 72.90389°W / 41.29861; -72.90389
Carries	Six lanes of I-95 / Conn. Turnpike
Crosses	Quinnipiac River
Locale	New Haven, Connecticut
Maintained by	Connecticut Department of Transportation
Characteristics
Design	Girder and floorbeam
Total length	1,443.2 metres (4,735 ft)
Width	25.6 metres (84 ft)
Clearance below	18.3 metres (60 ft)
History
Opened	January 2, 1958 (Reconstructed 2005-2015)
Closed	July 26, 2013

The Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, more commonly referred to as the Q Bridge by locals, is an extradosed bridge that carries Interstate 95 (Connecticut Turnpike) over the mouth of the Quinnipiac River in New Haven, in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The original 1,300 m (0.8 mi) span – which opened on January 2, 1958 – was a girder and floorbeam design where steel beams support the concrete bridge deck. The bridge carried three lanes of traffic in each direction with no inside or outside shoulders. The bridge was officially dedicated as the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge in 1995 to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The old Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge was replaced by a $554 million 10-lane extradosed bridge; the northbound span of which opened to traffic on June 22, 2012. Southbound traffic was shifted onto the new bridge, sharing the northbound span with northbound traffic until the new southbound span was completed in late 2015. Since the Gibbs Street Bridge in Portland, Oregon was redesigned from an extradosed span to a box girder bridge, the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge was the first extradosed bridge completed in the United States when it fully opened in September 2015. The new bridge is the centerpiece of a $2 billion megaproject to reconstruct and widen 13 miles (21 km) of I-95 between West Haven and Branford, called the I-95 New Haven Harbor Crossing Improvement Program.

This bridge was created as part of a project to build the Connecticut Turnpike, a toll road stretching from Greenwich to Killingly in the 1950s. By 1993 the Quinnipiac River bridge was considered outdated, and traffic bottlenecks had been a chronic problem over the Q bridge.