CHARLESTON, S.C. — There’s a new grand bridge in North America.
It’s the $632 million Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge that carries traffic on U.S. Highway 17 over the Cooper River between Charleston and Mount Pleasant. With the dedication and opening on July 16, it becomes the longest cable-stay bridge in North America with a main span of 1,546 feet.
That’s 20 feet more than the main span of the Alex Fraser Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia.
But it’s nowhere near the longest in the world, which is the 2,919-foot main span over the Tatara Bridge in Japan.
“We have created not only a bridge, but a thing of beauty,” Ravenel, a former state senator and U.S. congressman, told the crowd of some 1,500 at the dedication. “It’s a wonderful, beautiful structure.”
The new bridge replaces two old structures that the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) labeled as “obsolete.”
The 74-year-old Grace Memorial Bridge had only two lanes, no shoulders and was limited in its ability to carry vehicles weighing more than five tons.
Because of the weight limit, all Charleston-bound heavy trucks were forced to use a single southbound lane on the Pearman Bridge, which was built in 1968. The Pearman Bridge did not have emergency shoulders or a median separating the northbound and southbound lanes. Neither bridge offered the vertical or horizontal clearance to safely accommodate the latest large shipping vessels, the SCDOT said.
The new bridge offers a 1,000-foot wide channel and a vertical clearance of 186 feet, 400 feet wide than the old channel with 36 feet taller.
Both old bridges will be removed.
The dedication ceremonies capped a week of celebrations