Railroad: (
Bridge Hunter;
Historic Bridges;
Satellite)
Note the railroad bridge in the background. The 18-wheeler provides scale.
It looked like the approach spans had a different painting schedule than the main span. But when I used street view to zoom in on an approach span, I saw rust. It doesn't show up in this overview because it is in the shade.
Bridge Hunter comments talk about how steep the approaches are. And this emphases how narrow it is by today's federal standards for 12' lanes and a shoulder.
William Mills
posted two photos.
Nick Greenwich: So low to the water.
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My first reaction was that the river was high. But after looking at street views and additional photos, I realized that Nick is correct, the bridge is low. For example, this street view also shows the river touching the vegetation on the river bank. This view also captures the civil war pistol decoration in the guard rail for which this bridge is known.
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Jonathan Konopka posted
BNSF train crossing the Calcasieu River Swing Bridge in Lake Charles, LA. Photo credit belongs to Steve Carter. |
The railroad bridge used to have three truss spans but one was destroyed by a storm.
This photo shows that the bridge is far enough from the ocean that the river level does fluctuate, but not a lot.
The Bridge Hunter comments also talk about how bad the bridge is structurally. It has a rating of 76. Illinois is batting 60 with their
I-80 bridges over the Des Plaines River in Joliet, IL, with a
Critical (2/9) for the superstructure. I saved three Street Views because this bridge is going to disappear. At least Louisiana is talking about replacing this bridge. Illinois is not even talking about replacing their critically bad I-80 bridges. The replacement is estimated as $850m and an environmental impact statement is still needed in addition to a funding solution. "Further complicating the process of preparing the environmental impact statement is the remnants of an industrial hazardous materials spill on the west approach to the bridge in 1994. Cleanup efforts are still ongoing after 25 years, and there have been concerns about whether pile driving could create a pathway for hazardous materials to work their way into the drinking water aquifer....The Calcasieu River Bridge predates the U.S. interstate system and opened in 1952 as part of U.S. Highway 90. When Interstate 10 was constructed, it incorporated the bridge and other existing infrastructure from U.S. 90 as a cost-saving measure. The bridge was designed for a traffic load of 37,000 vehicles per day. In 2016, the average daily crossings were more than 80,000, according to the Southwest Louisiana Chamber. The American Road & Transportation Builders Association has classified the bridge as structurally deficient and functionally obsolete, and the National Bridge Registry has assigned the bridge a 6.6 rating out of 100. [I've seen a rating of 6 for the I-80 bridges. There must be more than one rating system. Or the ratings have plummeted since the Bridge Hunter posts were written.]...There are no shoulders on the four-lane bridge, and it has a 135-ft clearance over the Calcasieu River. It’s also nearly two decades past its 50-year life span. “It’s steep, and it’s narrow. It also vibrates quite a bit,” Kalivoda says, adding that the state has not been able to maintain a lighting system on the bridge because there is too much rattling to keep any lights in place. Officials want the new bridge to include six lanes with shoulders, and they want to lower the bridge height to 73 ft., which is the standard for shallow-draft waterways in Louisiana. [135' would clear ocean-going ships back in the 1950s.] The bridge would also have a 3% grade instead of a 5% grade." [
EngineeringNews-Record, absolute paycount]
This 2013 article lists the I-10 bridge as seventh of the 20 most unsafe bridges. But it doesn't even have the I-80 bridges. I'll bet the I-80 bridges were also pretty bad seven years ago.
Why are we looking at a casino boat that is just downstream from these bridges? Because during hurricane Laura it broke loose and...
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allided with the bridge piers. The eye of that Category 4 hurricane passed over Lake Charles in Aug 2020.
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