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From Its Hapless Beginning, Span's Reputation Only Fell
How many times do you think Lisa Baden has said that?
"Every day for six hours for the last 15 years," said the WTOP Radio morning traffic reporter. "I could just record it." (She swears she didn't.)
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A Bridge to Better Commutes The opening of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge tops off two difficult decades of community debate, Congressional-wrangling, consultant studies and blue-collar construction that many times seemed to be in serious trouble, before turning into a mega-project success story. Graphic Second Switch Begins Friday NightAt 8 p.m. Friday, crews on the Wilson Bridge start construction that will switch the inner loop of the Capital Beltway onto the new bridge. Southbound traffic will merge into one lane through Monday while construction crews mill and pave connections from the Beltway to the new bridge. Rerouting the inner loop is the latter of two traffic shifts; the outer loop switch occurred last month. All six lanes will be open on the new bridge after this weekend. When: From 8 p.m. Friday to as late as 5 a.m. Monday. Where: I-95 South from the Route 210 interchange in Maryland to the Route 1 interchange in Virginia. What: The three inner loop lanes will be reduced to a single lane approaching the bridge in Maryland to shift traffic to the new span. Three ramps will be closed and detoured. Delays and traffic backups are expected to be worse this weekend than during the outer loop switch last month. Monday: All ramps are scheduled to reopen by 5 a.m., and all six lanes of I-95/I-495 will be open on the new bridge. |
"St. Barnabas Road to the bridge is four miles, backed up consistently every Monday through Friday except during summer, when it's worse," Baden said, describing the rush-hour scene heading from Maryland to Virginia every morning. "And God forbid there be a problem in Virginia."
Her thoughts on the demise of her morning companion? "See ya. The love is over. Your 15 minutes of fame ended years ago, babe." Just to be clear, Baden sang a little tune: "I'm so glad we had this time together -- NOT!"
Jack Hay, born in Prince George's County four years before the bridge opened, has driven across it all his life and has been commuting across since 1982.
"It's steadily grown into a bigger nightmare every year," said Hay, who commutes between Charles County and Springfield. "When I first started driving across it in '82, the wait in the morning to get across was just a few minutes. Maybe it was backed up half a mile at 8 o'clock. Now I have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning -- and when I get there, it's already backed up five miles."
The backups were so bad the night of the Veterans Day storm that Hay slept in his Alexandria office.
All those jams have left a scar. "Most people want to see Europe, the Grand Canyon or something," Hay said. "I just want to see the [new] bridge completed and traffic flow smoothly without having to wait."
"It's the torture of the wait," he added, his voice trailing off.
Hay will have to wait two more years for his dream to come true. The new span -- also called the Wilson Bridge -- will double in size only when its second half opens in the summer of 2008.
The old bridge was built to carry 75,000 vehicles a day, a number that seemed like plenty in 1961 when Interstate 95 was planned to go through the District instead of across the bridge. But as soon as the late 1960s, well before those plans changed, more than 75,000 vehicles were crossing each day.
Not that anyone saw this coming. The speech that Hodges didn't deliver included a few predictions that were, you might say, a bit off.
