r/todayilearned • u/SuperCalibur • 5h ago
TIL There is a 23 mile bridge in Louisiana built in the 50s called the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pontchartrain_Causeway•
u/CrzyDonkey 5h ago
I was driving a truck across it a few years back with a vinyl siding shipment covington to Kenner. The truck shit out about 4-5 miles in and I had two SUV police cruisers show up and push the giant ass truck to a bridge/break(neutral ground) in the Causeway. While I waited for the tow truck to show up I had to piss so bad. I asked the remaining cop if I could go off the bridge... he obliged. One of the cooler pisses ive got to take in ny life
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u/smr312 5h ago
Where else have you peed?
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u/CrzyDonkey 4h ago
Let's just say once I was un-house trained at 4 or 5 by my outdoorsy lesbianish(we're still waiting) aunt, I learned real quick that the world is your urinal, not your oyster. All my grandmas flowers kept dying after this for some odd reason.
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u/Jive-Turkeys 3h ago
Lol is this the first time you've told this? I feel like I've read your story before, except there were more details about the progression of the flowers dying and trying to replant them. Probably just a déju vu though 😅
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u/asdf_lord 4h ago
I've peed in the Mississippi River. I like to think that pee ended up in the ocean or in someone's tap water.
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u/Spawn_More_Overlords 4h ago
I went to a concert around new years in New Orleans with my brother and we drove home to Mobile at like 2am and the fog was so intense on the bridge that you couldn’t actually tell we’d gotten off the bridge and were back in the trees.
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u/cooscoos3 5h ago
So you rank your pisses and this one wasn’t top of the list?
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u/QuantumCakeIsALie 4h ago
They ranked New York life pisses as far as I can tell. Not sure how this one qualifies.
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u/chill_lax_bruh 3h ago
I peed off of it drunk one time. I wasn't driving. It was fun. Also no cops were involved, it was just late at night traveling
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u/OePea 5h ago
Yup, and you have to hold your breath the whole way or bad things will happen
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u/Ancient-Biscotti-216 5h ago
That’s only for cemeteries silly
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u/OePea 5h ago
You cross your fingers for cemeteries, but you have to hold your breath for tunnels and bridges or the demons find you
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u/Ancient-Biscotti-216 4h ago
Damn. I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. No wonder I’m batshit crazy
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u/East-Cartoonist-8817 5h ago
driving across this when the fog rolls in feels surreal, you literally cannot see land in any direction for almost 8 miles in the middle
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u/BeheadedByTheBeast 5h ago
One way is smooth (south to north), and the other way is comedically bumpy. I’ve driven across it dozens of times.
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u/gjboudreaux 4h ago
There’s a documentary about building the bridges. The north-to-south bridge was built first, and the concrete sections cured with a dip in the middle, which causes the bumpy ride. When they built the south-to-north bridge, they poured the sections with a hump in the middle, and they cured flat, which gives you the smooth ride.
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u/JJohnston015 4h ago
I love the hubris of this bridge. An almost perfectly circular lake? Put 'er right down the middle.
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u/NOLA-VeeRAD 4h ago edited 4h ago
They were able to do it because the Lake is shallow and the bed is mostly flat. With only 12-14”*** average depth.
This is also why it won’t work in other places. Just as example, can’t connect Sicily with Italy using a bridge even thought the strait is a couple miles across. The average depth is 300’, and reaches depths as low as 800’.
Edit: ***12-14’ (feet). Sorry, old man didn’t use his glasses when typing.
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u/petit_cochon 1h ago
There is a road that curves around the lake. That's I-55. This bridge cuts right across the middle of the lake, saving commuters from populous areas a lot of time and distance. Before the bridge, before the interstate, you took what my mom called "the swamp road." That took a lot longer. Cool road, though.
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u/Wide_Philosophy_8109 2h ago edited 2h ago
Don't bamboozle me like that. This lake is nowhere near a circle.
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u/raptorbpw 4h ago
It’s funny how easily we as humans get used to things. As a New Orleanian who has crossed this bridge since childhood, I barely even notice (or appreciate) it, and driving it is routine to the point of feeling blasé.
But every now and then there’s a thread about it on Reddit, and I always enjoy seeing the reactions in these threads. It’s like seeing the bridge through new eyes. Helps me appreciate its absurdity again.
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u/irishbball49 1h ago
Yeah dog I’m never gonna drive over that. That feeling of being trapped- nope.
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u/GodsPRGuy 4h ago
I was on a pontoon boat once in the Lake. It was so much more shallow than I expected and then the depth finder would show a hole that just didn't have a bottom. It was oddly terrifying.
We went back up the canal at night using spotlights. I had NO IDEA there were that many alligators. All those eyes on the bank.....<shiver>
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u/KaHOnas 4h ago edited 4h ago
Louisiana has an absurd amount of sinkholes (or whatever the locals call them). Lots of salt domes and such in the geography.
Edit: iI was thinking of Lake Peigneur the whole time but I couldn't think of the name. There's a great video on YT about that drilling catastrophe in 1980.
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u/Thelonius_Dunk 4h ago
I drive across it every time I go home, and every now and then I'll see dead gators on the highway just before I get on. And yea, I think its only like 14ft deep or something, which is pretty shallow but deep enough for gators.
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u/Narf234 4h ago
Engineers had to consider the curvature of the earth in order to build it properly.
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u/SuperCalibur 4h ago
Yes, I found that particularly interesting when I saw a photo from an angle where you could see the curve. Pretty cool that it's so long they couldn't make it flat. There's a whole nother mathematical factor to include.
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u/nixcamic 3h ago
Could you share the picture, I want to show it to some flat earthers.
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u/erdnusss 1h ago
The provided link to wikipedia by OP has such a photo:
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u/guimontag 53m ago
why is there a giant hill in the bridge in the bottom right of this photo???
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u/erdnusss 50m ago
It looks distorted due to the zoom. If you pass it, it will be a gentle slope. It's probably to let boats pass, like the larger hill in the middle.
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u/guimontag 48m ago
after looking it up, it's not that it's distorted it's just that the scale is gigantic
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u/WalterWilliams 2h ago
I've spent way too much time using the haversine formula that I now recognize when it's indirectly referenced. I've also crossed this bridge a few times and the length is just absurd but also beautiful when the weather is nice.
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u/KiwDaWabbit2 5h ago
Someone should do Street View on Google Maps and see how long it takes to click across it.
I’ve been over it, and it’s really something being surrounded by water for that long. It makes me think about just how much trust we put into these things.
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u/atbths 4h ago
Next time you're driving down a 55mph 2 lane road, think about the trust you uave not only in the engineers and builders that made the machines on the road, but also in the other drivers doing the same thing only a few feet from you in the opposite direction.
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u/Silound 2h ago
As if anyone does 55 on the causeway....people either white-knuckle it at 10 under or rip it like fools at 10 over.
Fun and terrifying fact - there are no shoulders on the causeway.
If you are in an accident and your vehicle can be safely driven under its own power, you don't stop on the bridge. You proceed to the next crossover (there are 7), safety bay (there are 6 in each direction), or the end of the bridge and then pull over. Pick the closest option. Once safely off of the roadway, use the call boxes provided which connect you directly with the causeway police. Yes, the causeway has it's own dedicated police detachment that patrols and responds to emergencies on the bridge. This is not considered leaving the scene as long as you immediately pull off at the first available option and use the call box (good faith effort, safety, etc, etc).
People often ask why, and the reason is because safety, especially in fog. More injuries and collisions happen as a resulting follow-up accident than happen as prime accidents each year.
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u/Thelonius_Dunk 4h ago
If it makes you feel any better, its actually not that deep, something like only 14ft. But there are alligators in it in places.
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u/KiwDaWabbit2 4h ago
I live quite far away from it and don’t plan a visit any time soon, but I do also think of those things as well. Where I live, I have to do some kind of evasive maneuver to avoid an accident much more frequently than I’d prefer to admit, so I could only imagine it happening on that bridge.
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u/thejesse 3h ago
Someone measured street view speed clicking the farthest they could and they could do about 100mph.
So around fifteen minutes of clicking.
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u/EDRadDoc 4h ago
I used to live in NOLA and crossed it a number of times.
One of the most surreal things that happened? In a huge summer thunderstorm a waterspout formed like 300 yards from the bridge. There’s nowhere to go because there are no exits. I was less than 1/2 way across and was like “oh well, hopefully it stays away.”
Needless to say it did or I probably wouldn’t be here!
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u/Alone_Ad_7199 4h ago
Fun fact: Underneath most sections of the Causeway, the water depth is only about 12 to 16 feet deep. You can still drown but I guess that makes it less scary
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u/eightyeightbananas 4h ago
I grew up going across about once a month or so for various field trips and events in the city. Once puked over the side of one of the turn-around spots bc my parents had the bright idea to feed me Taco Bell the day after recovering from a stomach bug 🫣😂
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u/SuperCalibur 4h ago
Wow, there are spots to turn around?
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u/Drphil1969 4h ago
Yes, every few miles or so. One reason is there are no shoulders and only two lanes. I wish the builders would have some foresight to include them. But I guess that “was not in the budget” as they say
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u/Silound 2h ago
Definitely not in the budget, but also, I doubt any realistic engineer in the 1950's envisioned the amount of road traffic we have today (or the speed at which it travels). Engineering from a different era.
Around 2018 they added a dozen safety bays, six pairs at the same locations, that range from 600-1000 feet in length. Those were a huge improvement for safety, but the toll went up by a couple bucks.
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u/RogerRabbot 4h ago
Been across it 3 times, so freaking cool. And I had just come from the Florida keys, and they have this weird brag about their 7 mile bridge. Pft.
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u/Drphil1969 3h ago
Also the twin span is 5.5 miles long and the elevated portion of I 10 from Baton Rouge to Lafayette, the Atchafalaya Basin bridge is 18.2 miles long and the Manchac bridge at I 55 is 22.8 miles long. Louisiana has some long bridges
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u/bubblesculptor 3h ago
My favorite condition to drive across it is when there's no wind so the water is glass-smooth, near sunset or sunrise, and if the light is just right the color of sky & water match perfectly, with the horizon nearly indistinguishable.
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u/AbeVigoda76 5h ago
And if Jaws reaches the end of that bridge with those nanobots, New Orleans is doomed.
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u/Drphil1969 4h ago
I have been on it many times. Legend has it that AL Copeland of Popeyes crossed it in 9 minutes in his Porche, but that is likely urban legend. It is kind of boring. There is a point when you can’t see land from either side. And there is no shoulder. It desperately needs updating
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u/greenthumbgoody 4h ago
lol I was 15 and my grandma made me drive over it “to see if I can handle it” lol bitch we will die if I can’t! I love my grandma lol
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u/STEAIITHY 3h ago
The first time I saw it from a plane, I thought, is this some glitch in the Matrix?
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u/IXPhantomXI 3h ago
It was also part of a really fun James Bond level
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u/lego_joker 3h ago
I was waiting to see if someone would mention this! General consensus seems to be that game was better than all the actual Brosnan movies save Goldeneye.
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u/johnthedruid 4h ago
I read that the bridge is actually longer than the distance it spans to compensate for the curviture of the earth.
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u/the_cardfather 4h ago
It may be a little bit different from when I lived there but right on the south end of it was a shopping mall and then you went up one more light and if you didn't get off boom you're on the bridge. Like they warn you to check gas and say long bridge and stuff but I guess they figure you won't get on a bridge that looks like it goes forever if you don't know where you're going
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u/VegaBrother 3h ago
I commuted from the Northshore to UNO. My sister drove my car near empty the day before and I didn’t realize until my low fuel light came on while rushing to class on the causeway. Anxiety inducing!
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u/hammertime2009 3h ago
Why the fuck are the walls/barriers so LOW on this bridge?! You pop a tire or some drunk guy side swipes you and your shit could fall right in. I wonder how many people die off this.
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u/biggobird 1h ago
I spent many months of my childhood playing 007 everything or nothing and that Jaws chase in the tanker laden with nanobots across Lake Pontchartrain causeway for years was the only reason I know it existed.
Not to mention it came out shortly before Katrina hit and that part of the plot centered on using nanobots to eat away the levees and flood New Orleans.
Felt very surreal when it hit considering I’d just read about the levees only a few months prior
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u/LadyPaige 3h ago
I have driven the causeway a few times. It’s rather surreal. At a certain point you barely see either end of the bridge. It was the most efficient way to get to New Orleans though so yeah it was cool!
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u/Free_Tie2019 3h ago
Used to be the longest bridge then china one that was longer but was only longer cause it curved and added to the length. So now the causeway is the longest straight bridge
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u/TurdFerguson747474 3h ago
Drove across it twice a day for 6 years, it loses its novelty very quickly.
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u/BidAdministrative433 1h ago
pretty nervy when you go over it in a storm...thinking of it roils my stomache
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u/Puzzleheaded_Way_916 1h ago
They have rent a driver program for people who have a fear of driving on it
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u/nitrogenbagplease 4h ago
If you like long bridges and Louisiana and basically this same post, but the atchoo godbless you basin has a bridge, oh sorry, the Atchafalaya basin bridge is what it’s called, it’s 18 miles long and I think it may have held the record before the pony gates him, ugh the Pontchartrain bridge was built?
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u/DefendTheStar88x 4h ago
Yep, it's cool to ride along. I drove from the panhandle of Florida over to New Orleans one time and beyond that there's more elevated roadways along the Gulf.
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u/AlwaysOptimism 3h ago
There was a Jason Siegel movie where he jumps off this bridge to save people after a car crash
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u/savannah31401 3h ago edited 3h ago
Try driving on it with heavy fog...I hate driving that bridge. I just close my eyes the whole time when I get to be a passenger.
Once got stuck on it when a wreck happened. We went no where for a long time.
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u/nowhereman136 1h ago
Were you at my bar trivia game tonight? I just asked a question about this bridge
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u/mullethunter111 4h ago
Hurricane Katrina was when I first learned about it. It took a ton of damage in that storm.
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u/CocktailGenerationX 4h ago
It only suffered minor damage. The I-10 Twin Span between Slidell and New Orleans East is the one that suffered catastrophic damage.
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u/Drphil1969 3h ago
The twin Spain was significantly more damaged. Most of the spans wound up in the water
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u/sarahmagoo 5h ago
I drove past that on a tour the other day. It just stretches off into nothing.