Commute's New Dawn
The Path to New Wilson Span, and What Lies Ahead

By Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 14, 2006

About 11 a.m. Thursday, a new drawbridge half as heavy as the Eiffel Tower will be lowered over the Potomac River and the governors of Virginia and Maryland will walk from opposite shores to shake hands, signaling a new era for hundreds of thousands of commuters.

The transformation will be brought on by the opening next month of the first of two spans of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a muscular hunk of 25,000 tons of concrete and more than 30,000 tons of steel nearly two difficult decades in the making that promises to ease drives across the area -- at least for a while.

In a politically complex region that rarely agrees on how to solve its severe traffic problems, the bridge construction stands out as a success story. When the entire project is completed, Virginia and Maryland leaders will have joined hands to refashion 12 percent of the Capital Beltway and unclog the area's worst bottleneck.

Travelers will enjoy some easier trips when the first span opens to the public June 9, but the real benefits will come in two years, after a second six-lane span is completed. Together, they are likely to erase the miles-long jams synonymous with the Wilson Bridge -- hard as that may be for drivers to envision -- while alleviating congestion on several other river crossings.

The bridge, which also serves as a critical link on Interstate 95, promises so much more capacity that it could open a sizable stretch of the East Coast to more development, planners and economists say. That was possible when construction started but became even more so after the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission called for shifting more businesses, government centers and homes onto the I-95 corridor between Baltimore and Richmond.

The newest landmark on the Washington horizon is everything the old bridge is not. Today's Wilson is a flat, rickety, pothole-filled structure crammed between metal barriers that shakes under the weight of the 200,000 cars and trucks that cross it each day. Flecks of rusted metal occasionally drop into the river below.

Tomorrow's Wilson rises out of the Potomac on the support of 17 V-shaped piers that recall the look of the Arlington Memorial Bridge and other structural icons. It was built tall and wide and towers 20 feet over the old bridge on a gentle arc.

The span will be introduced at an invitation-only, 1,000-person ceremony that will include Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), several members of Congress and scores of local officials.

The Navy's Blue Angels will soar overhead to kick off the event, which will include music from the U.S. Air Force Band and -- in an homage to the man the bridge was named after -- an inaugural ride by Kaine, Ehrlich, Williams and Mineta in Woodrow Wilson's 1923 Rolls-Royce.

The opening of the span culminates years of community debate, consultant studies, engineer plans, congressional wrangling and construction that often appeared to be in jeopardy before turning into one of the nation's mega-project successes.

"It's a rare project, especially of that size, that goes that well both in terms of timing and budget," said John D. Porcari, who was Maryland's transportation secretary during much of the bridge's planning and now is vice president for administrative affairs at the University of Maryland. "There are dozens and dozens of people that take quiet pride in seeing that bridge take shape."

It wasn't easy for a project that seemed plagued from the get-go. The first planning study was criticized for not involving the public, and it was scrapped. Opponents challenged a second study as flawed. A judge sided with the opponents, throwing the entire effort into disarray before an appeals court reversed the decision. About that time in the late 1990s, Alexandria threatened to take legal action, arguing that the 12-lane design was too wide. That led to a decision that two lanes would be reserved for transit.

Once all that was settled, there was still the matter of paying for it. The states wanted the federal government to pay for most of the bridge, which was the only portion of the nation's interstate system still federally owned. Congress agreed to pay $900 million, but that left a $600 million gap over what the states were contributing. And that was before the price tag jumped by half a billion dollars, bringing the total to about $2.5 billion.

Finally, a concerted effort by several local congressmen, led by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), persuaded Congress to raise its contribution to $1.5 billion for what has become a $2.44 billion project.

Money did not beget happiness -- or even a workable state of harmony. Virginia, led by Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III, and Maryland, led by Democratic Gov. Parris N. Glendening, were at odds on practically every issue.

"At the beginning, we couldn't even agree on whether to build this thing in feet or meters," said Jim Ruddell, construction manager for the bridge. He wasn't kidding. It took a few meetings and a couple of months to solve that one, Ruddell said.

Agreeing on which state would manage which part of the project, noise regulations and whether to hire unionized workers were just a few of the other sticky issues.

The sides came up with an innovative solution for their loveless marriage: They sought counseling. Specifically, they created a 13-member committee that included federal, state and local officials and was charged with resolving many of the disputes.

"That was the real breakthrough in terms of being able to reach agreement on the process," Maryland State Highway Administrator Neil J. Pedersen said.

But serious problems continued to dog the effort. A big meeting to discuss the contract for construction of the bridge was interrupted by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Three months later, before about 300 people in what was supposed to be a celebration, project officials unveiled the bids. There was just one, and it was nearly $400 million over budget.

"You could have heard a pin drop," Ruddell said. "At first we all thought we incorrectly heard the bid or transposed the numbers or something. But there it was."

Project managers didn't know what to do. Had they grossly underestimated costs? Was the contractor trying to take advantage of them? Had prices escalated after the terrorist attacks?

After months of deliberation, they decided to split the construction work into three contracts. Although the project was delayed by 14 months, they eventually made deals at the prices they wanted.

That was the turning point. Contractors have hit their targets, and the working agreement has been held up as a model at a time when many major public works projects have foundered. The now infamous "Big Dig," which put a major Boston highway underground, was estimated at $2.6 billion but cost $14.6 billion. Replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is mired in delays, and the cost has risen from $2.6 billion to $5.5 billion.

Although Thursday's ceremony marks the completion of the first of the two spans, the bridge isn't scheduled to open to traffic until June 9, when the Beltway's outer loop is rerouted onto it. A month later, inner loop traffic will go onto it and the old bridge, which opened in 1961, will come down.

Traffic will run both ways on the six-lane span until summer 2008, when it will become part of the outer loop and the second six-lane span will open as the inner loop.

On shore, the 7.5-mile project includes the revamping of two interchanges on both sides of the river and the widening of the Beltway to match the bridge. The bulk of that work will be done when the second span opens, but it won't be completed until 2011.

The bridge that is being replaced is a traffic killer. It's not wide enough to handle the road around it, and the drawbridge opens five times a week. Because the bridge has no shoulders, traffic comes to an immediate and prolonged halt when there's as much as a fender bender -- and there always seems to be a fender bender.

Both spans of the new bridge will have shoulders on each sides. The lanes on each span will be divided into two sets of three, one set for local drivers and the other for express traffic. One of the local lanes will connect to access ramps for the heavily used exits on both sides of the bridge. A pedestrian path will be included.

The transit lanes, which are in the express sections, will probably not open when the spans are finished. Maryland and Virginia are studying the addition of express toll lanes, which would allow for bus service. Other considerations include a Metro extension or light rail.

The opening of the first span won't increase the number of lanes over the old bridge, but its shoulders will allow accidents to be cleared in relatively short order, and its smooth surface will ease drives. In addition, its height will reduce the number of times it is opened each year from 260 to 60.

When the second span opens, the bridge will eliminate the bottleneck the old six-lane bridge causes on the eight-lane Beltway. Traffic experts expect the daily jams to all but disappear, at least in the short term, before the increased capacity begets more development.

"Instead of being a regional bottleneck, it will be a transportation facility that will actually make it easier to get between two states and literally bring the region together," Porcari said.

The bridge also should help alleviate some of the increasingly long tie-ups on such alternate routes as the 14th Street Bridge, the American Legion Bridge and the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge in Southern Maryland.

"This ranks up there with the 1970s when the steel plates and trenches in downtown D.C. were removed with the opening of the Metrorail system," said Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce R. Homer. "The region suffered through a decade of inconvenience, and those investments paid off handsomely, just as they've suffered now and these investments are paying off."