Narrative history of Big Money Opening Day: III
You know parking in Charleston costs three bucks? In some places it costs five. Good thing we knew this to begin with. When the Grace bridge comes into Charleston it lands right on the corner of Lee and America streets. Most cars plow right through this intersection and take the up ramp to 17 and I-26. We took a quick left, passed under the expressway, and somehow found our way out of the tangle by way of a ramp up to the Pearman, which we crossed for the final time into Mount Pleasant. The Pearman was the first of the two I went over as a kid. Eighteen years later I drove off of it forever, and most of my thoughts were devoted to finding a parking spot and not paying for it.
The solution appeared off our starboard side: a Huddle House on a frontage road by 17. (The VIP got to park on the bridge itself.) The food place was hard by a motel, and it didn't seem any more full than a motel parking lot would early in the morning before check out time. There were still maybe half a dozen spots left, facing the highway. In the grass between the highway and the parking lot were a group of people picnicking and a TV crew preparing to go on live. That most walkers were using another ramp to get up on the bridge, and there was no foot traffic using "our" ramp, was a source of worry. On the other hand, we didn't see any police or other authority figures "blockin' the market," so we blessed our good luck, turned in, and dropped the anchor at about 8.20. Mid-span was two miles away.
It was hot, sticky; the heat index at 9.00 was 98. In my state of idiocy I had on a shirt and tie, olive pants, and college bowl shoes. No breeze, but then again we were on the ground. 200 feet above a wide expanse of water should always enjoy a benevolent wind. We couldn't get there fast enough. Through some shrubs, over the grass, ducking the TV crew, and we were on a deserted stretch of freshly paved, black road that in six hours would become a U.S. highway. Ahead lay a tangle of ramps, railings, and curving viaducts. This was all we saw; we couldn't see the bridge.
In Mt. Pleasant were five ramps. When the bridge would open to traffic around 3 in the afternoon, three ramps would be in operation; two more would open later. One leading up from 17 would be open next week. Another, leading up from a residential street called Wingo Way, was still under construction but not absolutely vital. That meant only one ramp led up the bridge, the one from highway 703 (Coleman Boulevard). This would prove to be a pain to us later.
The other two ramps led off the bridge. One went to Coleman, the other went to 17. This was the ramp we chose to get on the bridge. That afternoon thousands of cars would be tear-assing down the ramp; we were going up. So we were walking the wrong way.
Over on the Charleston side things were more complicated. The bridge ended right on what was I-26 farther north than did the old bridges, but the part of 17 in Charleston had to connect with the part of 17 going over the bridge. So I-26 was shortened by a mile. Two ramps connected the old I-26 to the bridge and carried 17; two other ramps connected 17 to I-26. Two ramps led to and from Meeting Street; two more led to and from East Bay Street. The last pair of ramps did not connect to the bridge at all, but were built for the convenience of the motorist: one led up from Meeting to I-26, the other led down from I-26 to Cypress. That's a sum of ten ramps in Charleston and fifteen ramps total.
In the public eye those interchanges were subordinate to the bridge, but they were engineering achievements in themselves. Each were considered by the contractors as separate projects. In fact there were five separate projects being worked on at the same time: the Charleston interchange, the Mt. Pleasant interchange, the Charleston approach viaduct, the Mt. Pleasant approach viaduct, and the bridge itself. This was almost a neccessity in order to get such a large construction job finished on time.
The primary contractor was a consortium between Tidewater/Skanska, the Virginia branch of the Swedish construction firm called Skanska, and HBG Flatiron. When they submitted bids years before they named their consortium Palmetto Bridge Constructors. So it was the PBC logo that was on all the hard hats, vests, trucks, and newspapers.
Palmetto Bridge was officially "primary design-build." Design-build was a lot like shooting a film without a finished script, except when you make a mistake on the movie set you can just shoot again. An error in building this bridge could mean months of delays and millions of dollars lost. But Palmetto Bridge did not move at a reckless pace, just a very, very brisk one. Cables were hung before towers were finished. Much work was done at night. Interchange work over existing roads blocked traffic for short periods only. Ground was broken on 2 July 2001, and the bridge was finished 50 weeks ahead of schedule. The cost was something like $631 million.
But for figuring out how to finance infrastructure as huge as this, a new bridge might have been built years earlier. Upstate politicians did not want to pay for a bridge to be used mostly by Charlestonians. Lowcountry politicians did not want to pay for a bridge owned by the entire state. Charleston County did not want to pay an extra gas tax. Meanwhile the State Port Authority kept on demanding a larger channel clearance. There was a decades-long deadlock which finally ended when a former U.S. Congressman ran for and won a seat in the state Senate for the express purpose of creating a fund to finance a new Cooper River bridge. This man was Arthur Ravenel, and in the minds of most he did more than anyone to get the new bridge.
The immediate result of Ravenel's efforts in the Senate was the State Infrastructure Bank, passed by a narrow margin a few years ago. The SIB would finance transportation projects statewide, such as the Conway Bypass. As a result the DOT could brag that it was tackling 27 years worth of construction and improvements in only seven years. As for the Ravenel bridge, the SIB would pay for half the bridge; the FHWA, one-sixth. The rest of the money came from a federal loan to be repaid in annual installments over 25 years. The money for the installments would be put up by the SIB, the DOT, Charleston County, and the Port Authority. Everybody grumbled, especially the county, but agreed that this was the best solution to the money problem. And on Opening Day everyone realized even more that it was all worth it.
The solution appeared off our starboard side: a Huddle House on a frontage road by 17. (The VIP got to park on the bridge itself.) The food place was hard by a motel, and it didn't seem any more full than a motel parking lot would early in the morning before check out time. There were still maybe half a dozen spots left, facing the highway. In the grass between the highway and the parking lot were a group of people picnicking and a TV crew preparing to go on live. That most walkers were using another ramp to get up on the bridge, and there was no foot traffic using "our" ramp, was a source of worry. On the other hand, we didn't see any police or other authority figures "blockin' the market," so we blessed our good luck, turned in, and dropped the anchor at about 8.20. Mid-span was two miles away.
It was hot, sticky; the heat index at 9.00 was 98. In my state of idiocy I had on a shirt and tie, olive pants, and college bowl shoes. No breeze, but then again we were on the ground. 200 feet above a wide expanse of water should always enjoy a benevolent wind. We couldn't get there fast enough. Through some shrubs, over the grass, ducking the TV crew, and we were on a deserted stretch of freshly paved, black road that in six hours would become a U.S. highway. Ahead lay a tangle of ramps, railings, and curving viaducts. This was all we saw; we couldn't see the bridge.
In Mt. Pleasant were five ramps. When the bridge would open to traffic around 3 in the afternoon, three ramps would be in operation; two more would open later. One leading up from 17 would be open next week. Another, leading up from a residential street called Wingo Way, was still under construction but not absolutely vital. That meant only one ramp led up the bridge, the one from highway 703 (Coleman Boulevard). This would prove to be a pain to us later.
The other two ramps led off the bridge. One went to Coleman, the other went to 17. This was the ramp we chose to get on the bridge. That afternoon thousands of cars would be tear-assing down the ramp; we were going up. So we were walking the wrong way.
Over on the Charleston side things were more complicated. The bridge ended right on what was I-26 farther north than did the old bridges, but the part of 17 in Charleston had to connect with the part of 17 going over the bridge. So I-26 was shortened by a mile. Two ramps connected the old I-26 to the bridge and carried 17; two other ramps connected 17 to I-26. Two ramps led to and from Meeting Street; two more led to and from East Bay Street. The last pair of ramps did not connect to the bridge at all, but were built for the convenience of the motorist: one led up from Meeting to I-26, the other led down from I-26 to Cypress. That's a sum of ten ramps in Charleston and fifteen ramps total.
In the public eye those interchanges were subordinate to the bridge, but they were engineering achievements in themselves. Each were considered by the contractors as separate projects. In fact there were five separate projects being worked on at the same time: the Charleston interchange, the Mt. Pleasant interchange, the Charleston approach viaduct, the Mt. Pleasant approach viaduct, and the bridge itself. This was almost a neccessity in order to get such a large construction job finished on time.
The primary contractor was a consortium between Tidewater/Skanska, the Virginia branch of the Swedish construction firm called Skanska, and HBG Flatiron. When they submitted bids years before they named their consortium Palmetto Bridge Constructors. So it was the PBC logo that was on all the hard hats, vests, trucks, and newspapers.
Palmetto Bridge was officially "primary design-build." Design-build was a lot like shooting a film without a finished script, except when you make a mistake on the movie set you can just shoot again. An error in building this bridge could mean months of delays and millions of dollars lost. But Palmetto Bridge did not move at a reckless pace, just a very, very brisk one. Cables were hung before towers were finished. Much work was done at night. Interchange work over existing roads blocked traffic for short periods only. Ground was broken on 2 July 2001, and the bridge was finished 50 weeks ahead of schedule. The cost was something like $631 million.
But for figuring out how to finance infrastructure as huge as this, a new bridge might have been built years earlier. Upstate politicians did not want to pay for a bridge to be used mostly by Charlestonians. Lowcountry politicians did not want to pay for a bridge owned by the entire state. Charleston County did not want to pay an extra gas tax. Meanwhile the State Port Authority kept on demanding a larger channel clearance. There was a decades-long deadlock which finally ended when a former U.S. Congressman ran for and won a seat in the state Senate for the express purpose of creating a fund to finance a new Cooper River bridge. This man was Arthur Ravenel, and in the minds of most he did more than anyone to get the new bridge.
The immediate result of Ravenel's efforts in the Senate was the State Infrastructure Bank, passed by a narrow margin a few years ago. The SIB would finance transportation projects statewide, such as the Conway Bypass. As a result the DOT could brag that it was tackling 27 years worth of construction and improvements in only seven years. As for the Ravenel bridge, the SIB would pay for half the bridge; the FHWA, one-sixth. The rest of the money came from a federal loan to be repaid in annual installments over 25 years. The money for the installments would be put up by the SIB, the DOT, Charleston County, and the Port Authority. Everybody grumbled, especially the county, but agreed that this was the best solution to the money problem. And on Opening Day everyone realized even more that it was all worth it.