AAA Carolinas release their Top 20 worst bridges in North Carolina

An annual topic here on the blog is the 20 Worst Bridges in North Carolina produced by AAA Carolinas. The 2010 list was recently released and the bridge making the most headlines is the I-85 bridge over the Yadkin River that is steadily climbing towards the top of the list.

This year the Yadkin River bridge is ranked as the 6th worst bridge in the state compared to being ranked 8th one year ago.

The complete list of 20 is available here (via WFMY-TV).

The #1 least sufficient bridge in the state remains the I-40/Business 85 bridge over South Buffalo Creek near Greensboro. Most of the bridges on the list were built between 1950 and 1969. The two youngest bridges on the list -- a bridge carrying I-277 over Johnson Street and the SCLRR in Charlotte (#2 on the list) and the bridge that carries US 52 over SR 4315 in Winston-Salem (#14) -- were built in 1971.

The oldest bridge on the list was built in 1943. It carries US 17 Business over the New River in Jacksonville. The bridge is scheduled to be replaced this year.

Additional Stories:
Guilford County Bridge Tops AAA Substandard List ---WFMY-TV
I-85 bridge No. 6 on list of state's worst ---Salisbury Post
85/Yadkin River Bridge dubbed one of the state's worst ---WBTV-TV

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog