The Ship Canal Bridge is a double-deck steel truss bridge that carries Interstate 5 over Seattle's Portage Bay (part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, after which it is named) between Capitol Hill and the University District. The canal below connects Lake Union with Lake Washington. Construction was completed in 1961 and the bridge opened to traffic in December 1962. It is 4,429 ft (1,350 meters) long, stands 182 feet above the canal and is 119 feet wide at the upper deck. It was the largest bridge of its kind in the Northwest when it first opened. The bridge is double decked, with the upper deck carrying traffic in both directions and the lower deck (the express lanes) carrying traffic southbound in the morning and northbound in the afternoon.
Other nearby bridges include University Bridge, Montlake Bridge, and George Washington Memorial Bridge (the Aurora Ave bridge).
After the Mississippi River Bridge collapse of August 1, 2007 this is one of the bridges WSDOT is inspecting as it is a similar design.
Famous quotes containing the words ship, canal and/or bridge:
“Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)