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The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge (also known as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge or the Wilson Bridge) is a bascule bridge that spans the Potomac River between the independent city of Alexandria, Virginia, and Oxon Hill in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The bridge is one of only a handful of drawbridges in the U.S. Interstate Highway System. It contained the only portion of the Interstate system owned and operated by the federal government, but was turned over to the Virginia and Maryland departments of transportation upon project completion. The Wilson Bridge carries Interstate 95 and Interstate 495 (the Capital Beltway). The drawbridge on the original span opened approximately 260 times a year, causing frequent disruption to traffic on the bridge, which carried approximately 250,000 cars each day. The new, higher span requires fewer openings. The bridge's west abutment is in Virginia, a small portion is in Washington, D.C., and the remaining majority of it is within Maryland (because that section of the Potomac River is within Maryland's borders). About 300 feet (90 m) of the western mid-span portion of the bridge crosses the tip of the southernmost corner of the District of Columbia. Therefore, the bridge is the only bridge in the United States that crosses the borders of three jurisdictions. The section in Washington, D.C. is also the shortest segment of Interstate Highway between state lines. The bridge is named in honor of the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who, when elected in 1912, was serving as the Governor of New Jersey, but who was a native of Staunton, Virginia. While he was President, Wilson reportedly spent an average of two hours a day riding in his automobile to relax or to "loosen his mind from the problems before him." President Wilson was an advocate of automobile and highway improvements in the United States. In 1916 he stated "My interest in good roads is...to bind communities together and open their intercourse, so that it will flow with absolute freedom and facility". == 1961 bridge == The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge was planned and built as part of the Interstate Highway System created by Congress in 1956. Construction of the bridge began in the late 1950s, and it opened to traffic on December 28, 1961.〔 Edith Wilson, the widow of President Woodrow Wilson, died that very morning; she was supposed to have been the guest of honor at the bridge's dedication ceremony. As originally built, the bridge had six traffic lanes, and was 5,900 feet (1,798 m) long. The structure was built as a bascule bridge to allow large, ocean-going vessels access to the port facilities of Washington, D.C.〔 Designed to handle 75,000 vehicles a day, the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge became extremely overcrowded by 1999, as it was handling 200,000 vehicles a day, more than 2.6 times the original design capacity. The bridge had serious maintenance problems, and underwent continuous patchwork maintenance beginning in the 1970s. It was completely re-decked in 1983.〔 One of the reasons for the excess traffic was that it was not originally planned to be part of the major north–south Interstate 95, but rather, as part of the circumferential Capital Beltway. I-95 was planned to bisect the Capital Beltway with a shorter through-route, extending north from Springfield, Virginia across the Potomac River, through downtown Washington, D.C., and the northeastern section of the District, and into Maryland to reconnect with the Beltway near College Park, Maryland. While the portions in Virginia and in the District south of New York Avenue were built, the remaining segment – designated the Northeast Freeway – was successfully opposed by residents, and construction was finally canceled in the late 1970s. The portion north of Springfield was designated as a spur, I‑395. The eastern half of the Capital Beltway was additionally signed as I‑95. Other sources of increased traffic have been growth in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and increases in suburb-to-suburb commuting. Because housing costs in Prince George's County, Maryland are much lower than in Northern Virginia – which has boomed with enormous job growth in recent decades – tens of thousands of workers commute daily over the bridge, a situation not anticipated when it was constructed. After the highway on both sides of the bridge was widened to eight lanes, the six-lane bridge became a daily bottleneck as heavy traffic slowed in order to funnel into fewer lanes. Two incidents demonstrated this. On November 11, 1987, a snowstorm snarled traffic;〔 〕 many commuters ran out of gas and spent the night in their vehicles on the bridge. In November 1998, the bridge was closed for several hours during the afternoon rush hour when Ivin L. Pointer engaged police in a seven-hour standoff. (Pointer jumped off the bridge, but survived the fall.) 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「Woodrow Wilson Bridge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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