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The Charter Oak Bridge is one of the three highway bridges over the Connecticut River in Hartford, Connecticut. The twin steel stringer bridge carries (Route 15/U.S. Route 5) over the river, connecting downtown Hartford with East Hartford. Named for Connecticut's famed Charter Oak, the original crossing opened as toll bridge in the early 1940s, allowing through traffic to pass south of downtown Hartford. It was replaced by the current bridge in 1991, which is free to motorists. The Charter Oak Bridge has an average daily traffic of 79,800.() == History == The first motor vehicle bridge across the Connecticut River at Hartford was the Bulkeley Bridge, which opened in 1908. In 1929 the Connecticut General Assembly passed an act creating a commission to study the need for a second bridge. The outcome was a proposed new bridge from Main and Pitkin Streets in East Hartford to Wyllys Street at Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford. In 1931 the commission hired a design consultant. The new design was an suspension span, with the eastern end shifted south to Main Street and Silver Lane. The project went to bid in 1933 and would cost $4.4 million. However, the Great Depression struck, banks were closed, and nothing further was done with the bridge until the decade was nearly over. With the opening of the Merritt Parkway in 1940 and the construction of the Wilbur Cross Highway underway, the General Assembly authorized a new bridge commission, this time for a toll bridge that would carry the area's first expressways across the Connecticut River. The commission studied several sites and arrived at a Silver Lane to Wawarme Avenue alignment. In late 1940, construction began. On Dec. 4, 1941, disaster struck, when a section of the Charter Oak Bridge fell into the Connecticut River during construction. Sixteen men fell to their deaths in the icy river, and 606 tons of steel, including a 176-ton derrick, plummeted into the water. One body was never recovered. Sixteen other men were rescued by the Hartford fire department. Engineers later determined that the bridge section, erected over the water from the Hartford side, fell as a result of movement in the falsework, the temporary steel and wood structure used to support the bridge girders until enough had been erected to reach the next pier. The temporary support structure moved as a result of a shift in the unstable varved clay under the river. Despite the disaster, the bridge's builder, the American Bridge Company, ordered new steel the same day the bridge fell, and it was completed on time. The six-lane Charter Oak Bridge and four-lane approach highways opened to traffic on September 5, 1942. Tolls were collected in both directions at a plaza in East Hartford. When the bridge opened, it was the longest continuous plate girder bridge in the country. In 1948, the designation of state Route 15 was changed, to include a continuous planned expressway, complete in many places, from Greenwich to Union. This included the Merritt Parkway, the Berlin Turnpike, and the Charter Oak Bridge, forming at the time Connecticut's most advanced, prominent highway. The bridge carries US 5 to this day along with Route 15, but also carried U.S. Route 6) from 1943 to 1970. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charter Oak Bridge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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