An Era Ends With a Squeal of Brakes
On a Steamy, Backup-Filled Weekend, the Old Wilson Bridge Carries Its Last Passengers
Sunday, July 16, 2006; Page C01
At 2:28 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Paul Chang unwittingly drove into history when his white Toyota Camry crossed the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge, making him the final driver who sat through the final traffic jam on the final day in the span's congestion-plagued 45-year history.
Moments later, a line of hard hat-wearing construction workers who had laid asphalt through the night welcomed inner loop traffic onto the new Wilson Bridge, thus commencing its first jam at the midpoint of a weekend filled with hours-long backups.
  Paul Chang of Mechanicsville, with, from left, nieces Sarah and Rachel and daughter Silvie, was the last driver to cross the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge. (By Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post) |
Chang, on his way back from picking up two nieces at Dulles International Airport after their 18-hour flight from South Korea, was very surprised and very excited to be a part of history.
He was also very, very lost.
"I was so excited talking to them, I lost my exit," said Chang, who went the wrong way around the 64-mile Capital Beltway en route to his Richmond area home. "I'm just glad I didn't have an accident."
Chang said it was one of the best wrong turns of his life. Being the last driver over the bridge was "unbelievable," said Chang, who was given a silver dollar-size medallion with an image of the new bridge. "I'm very excited for the historical moment."
The moment ushers in a new era for Washington area drivers as well as those heading up and down the East Coast. Although it has the same number of lanes as the one it replaced, the new bridge is expected to ease drives because its shoulders will allow accidents and downs to be cleared in relatively short order and because its taller height will reduce the number of times the drawbridge is opened each year from 260 to 60.
Major traffic-changing benefits are expected in the summer of 2008 when a second six-lane span opens, making the bridge the widest point on the Beltway and eliminating the bottleneck the old six-lane bridge caused on the eight-lane highway.
The $2.44 billion bridge project also includes upgrading several interchanges in Virginia and Maryland to increase capacity on the Beltway and to accommodate the additional lanes on the bridge. The last of that work is planned to be done by 2011.
Bridge officials said that the weekend task of realigning the Beltway onto the new bridge was proceeding on schedule and that they hoped to open all three lanes sometime today. The three outer-loop lanes opened last month.
It wasn't so great yesterday for the drivers who got stuck waiting to cross the Potomac River, though. The lengthy backups and hours-long jams predicted for inner loop drivers arrived right on cue.
By 11:30 a.m., backups on the Maryland shore stretched for four miles. The mass of motorists began just before the St. Barnabas Road exit in Prince George's County with the squeal of brakes, a sea of flashing taillights and the abrupt fight against inertia.
