#Shell 1 2 connecting bridge archive#
#Shell 1 2 connecting bridge plus#

When completed, one single tube section could weigh as much as 12,000 tons.

They were also outfitted with water and drainage pipelines, electrical boxes and outlets, ventilation ducts/flues and telephone and traffic controls. Here, the tubes were lined with an inner ring of concrete fill and fitted with roadway mats and a 2 1/2-foot sidewalk. These 23 behemoth steel tubes, adorned with watertight bulkheads at both ends, were transported 250 miles by tug boats down the Delaware River to a вЂњshape upвЂќ basin in Hampton Roads, 6 miles from the tunnel site. The octagonal outer tube shells were 37 feet in diameter, with the circular inner shells each measuring 33 feet. They were fabricated by the Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Corporation of Eddystone, Pa. The tunnel was formed from 23 double-shell steel tube sections, each of them 300 feet long and requiring nearly 600 tons of structural steel to construct. The artificial land masses were named North Island-connecting to the Hampton tunnel entrance in Phoebus, where tunnel construction started-and South Island, on the Norfolk side near Willoughby Spit. The two firms also concurrently oversaw the engineering and construction of 23 miles of approach roads to the tunnels, and Merritt-Chapman & Scott built both the bridge-tunnel sections and the man-made islands, which were designed to link the trestle bridges to the tunnels (using more than 5 1/2 million pounds of вЂњfillвЂќ dredged from the bottom of the Bay). The original design and engineering team was the New York firm of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Hall & Macdonald, and the construction firm was Merritt-Chapman & Scott, also from New York.

A tunnel was necessary because a conventional bridge would block and potentially hinder Navy vessels. With a $44 million price tag, the HRBT included, at that time, the largest underwater trench-type tunnel in the world-7,479 feet long from portal to portal-and the first to be constructed between two man-made islands. Within a year, more than 6,000 vehicles were passing through its portals daily.

#Shell 1 2 connecting bridge plus#

At a cost of $1.25, plus 20 cents per passenger, the tunnel could get motorists across the harbor in seven minutes. There were two main ferry routes-one that ran from the Norfolk Naval Base to downtown Newport News, and another that traveled from NorfolkвЂ™s Willoughby Spit to Fort Monroe in Hampton. But how did we get here? And how did this thing ever get built in the first place? On the 60th anniversary of itвЂ™s opening, we tell you why you should care about the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.Д«efore the construction of the 3 1/2-mile crossing, visitors to and from the Peninsula had to take a 30-minute ferry ride-a system that could accommodate approximately 2,500 motorists a day-or embark on a long, 25-mile detour via Rt. 1вЂќ by appreciative engineers worldwide-is about to get some much-needed relief. Now, after years of studies, plans, commissions and community angst, this venerable tube- nicknamed вЂњHampton Roads No. ItвЂ™s also greatly enabled commerce, brought communities together and made it easier for the outside world to enjoy the regionвЂ™s bounties. While travelers might bemoan the awful traffic congestion consistently faced at todayвЂ™s four-lane HRBT, the expanse has indeed destroyed distance and conquered time. Consisting of man-made islands, trestles and tunnels, the original two-lane vehicle crossing was, and still is, a towering engineering achievement.

1, 1957.В вЂњWith this bridge tunnel we have destroyed distance and conquered time.вЂќДЄnd with that prophetic speech, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) was opened for the first time, connecting the Peninsula to Norfolk and Virginia Beach. вЂњForecast, if you dare, the traffic, the population, the wealth and the standard of living in the years ahead,вЂќ General James Anderson, VirginiaвЂ™s then-highway commissioner told the ribbon-cutting crowd at the opening of a historic, and somewhat futuristic, new public works project on Nov.

#Shell 1 2 connecting bridge archive#

Archive Photos Courtesy of Virginia Department of Transportation