Louisiana's 24-mile Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
Lake Bridge Has Changed the Face and Fate of the New Orleans Area
Jan 26, 2009 Carroll Trosclair
The causeway, which was opened in 1956 and doubled in 1969, has changed the face and politics of New Orleans, as well as Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes (counties). In the course of its colorful history, the bridge has also impacted thousands of lives, the fate of hundreds of businesses and the careers of dozens of politicians and bureaucrats either enjoying its success or drowning in the numerous scandals that have enveloped its commission.
The bridge connects Metairie, an unincorporated New Orleans neighbor on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, to Mandeville, a once-sleepy resort town on the opposite side of the 24-mile wide lake. In the 19th Century, Orleanians would travel to Mandeville by steamboat to picnic along the lake’s north shore or to enjoy a day under the oaks of the Fontainebleau Plantation.
Cars eventually replaced the steamboat, but it was at least a 50-mile drive around the eastern side of the lake to get from New Orleans to Mandeville. The desire to visit, live in or commute to Mandeville and the attractive north shore was so great that some leaders proposed building islands in the lake and then connecting them with bridges.
World’s Longest Bridge
That never happened, but in 1956 Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes built what was then the world’s longest bridge from Mandeville to Metairie in Jefferson Parish. The pre-stressed concrete causeway accelerated the population growth of St. Tammany from 37,000 in 1960 to 226,625 in 2007.
For decades, the bridge also brought millions of dollars worth of north shore retail business to Jefferson Parish. And since most Orleanians began going through Metairie to get to the north shore, Jefferson Parish sold a lot more gasoline.
Metairie had already absorbed much of New Orleans’ westward population migration and was running out of land to expand. But it capitalized on the St. Tammany growth by building the Lakeside Shopping Center, Louisiana’s largest shopping center, near the southern end of the causeway. The center attracted most of the north shore residents commuting to work in Metairie and New Orleans. For decades, it served as the north shore’s primary shopping destination.
Helped Jefferson and St. Tammany
The causeway helped both Jefferson and St. Tammany so much that a parallel span was built in 1969, providing two lanes of traffic both ways. That increased the safety of the trip and decreased the length to about a half hour.
The original bridge cost $27.5 million. The 1969 addition cost $29 million. In 1993 the causeway commission approved a nine-year $70 million repair project. The bridge is financed with a $3 toll collected at the north shore entrance.
Traffic on the causeway grew so rapidly in the 1990s that there was one proposal to widen each span and another to build a $380 million third bridge. Both ideas have since been put aside.
Primary Hurricane Evacuation Route
Traffic on the causeway has increased from 12,500 per day in 1992 to 42,000 per weekday in 2008. The bridge has also served as a primary evacuation route to help south shore residents escape hurricanes.
Numerous problems and occasional scandals have accompanied the bridge growth. Fog-caused collisions have resulted in huge traffic delays. According to The Times-Picayune, boats and barges have crashed into the causeway at least 16 times, twice knocking out sections of the bridge and once pitching cars into the water. However, marine collisions have decreased significantly since the commission set up a radar system and one-mile safety zone in the 1980s.
The bridge commission and its police force have been haunted by scandals involving the skimming of tolls, insurance kickbacks, arrest policies, abuses of toll exemptions and even the Mandeville mayor’s ramming of a tollbooth barrier.
References:
- Sightseer’s Guide to Engineering.com
- "Causeway emergency team drill," by Cindy Chang, The Times-Picayune, Sep. 27, 2007
- The Causeway.com, Jan. 25, 2009
- "Tranquil Old Resort Preserved," by Barbara J. Alpert, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Feb. 23, 1986
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