Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge

How to Get There

From Charleston, SC: Head east on US‑17 toward Mount Pleasant and continue straight across the Cooper River using the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

Overview

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge (also known as the Ravenel Bridge and the Cooper River Bridge) is a cable-stayed bridge over the Cooper River in South Carolina, connecting downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant. The bridge has a main span of 1,546 feet (471 m), the third longest among cable-stayed bridges in the Western Hemisphere. It was built using the design-build method and was designed by Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Design

The Ravenel Bridge is a cable-stayed design with two diamond-shaped towers, each 575 feet (175 m) high. The total length of the structure is 13,200 feet (4.0 km), with the main span stretching 1,546 feet (471 m) between the towers. 128 individual cables anchored to the inside of the diamond towers suspend the deck 186 feet (57 m) above the river. The roadway consists of eight 12-foot (3.7 m) lanes, four in each direction plus a 12-foot (3.7 m) bicycle and pedestrian path, which runs along the south edge of the bridge overlooking Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean.

The bridge includes a shared bicycle-pedestrian path named Wonders' Way in memory of Garrett Wonders. Wonders was a US Navy ensign stationed in Charleston and was in training for the 2004 Olympics before he died in a bicycle-vehicle collision.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0