Woodrow Wilson Bridge - Capacity and Maintenance

Capacity and Maintenance

Designed to handle 75,000 vehicles a day, by 1999 the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge was handling 200,000 vehicles a day. 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.)