Woodrow Wilson Bridge

TV PICK--Extreme Engineering-- Replacing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac. (Discovery Channel, Sunday, 2 p.m.)

Maryland motorists headed south on Interstate 95 this summer will find their travels a little easier with the opening this month of the second span of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac. The inner loop bridge, alongside the outer loop span that opened in 2006, will be dedicated today in a ceremony including U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, Gov. Martin O'Malley, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. The officials will arrive in President Woodrow Wilson's 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine.

Somebody has to be president, alas. Forget Florida. Pandas have returned to the National Zoo and all is right with the world. TV program note: DAG is not JAG. Charging tolls at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge the same as other bridges wouldn't solve all of Maryland's traffic problems. Only some of them. The British Museum finally put a lid on it.

Bureaucratic red tape has placed Maryland's fledgling artificial-reef program in financial straits that might require a $480,000 bailout by the Department of Natural Resources. A $500,000 bond bill approved by the General Assembly last session was supposed to ensure that contractors from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge replacement project got paid for delivering concrete and steel construction debris to sites in the Chesapeake Bay. But "boilerplate" language in the contract between the state and the guardians of the nonprofit Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative is preventing the bond money from being transferred to the program.

Arms control is something you never notice till it's gone. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge is federal taxpayers' present to Washington suburbanites. In Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, motorists crossing them paid for the bridges. Marylands revenue projections are so bad that anyone who ought to be governor wont want to, and whoever does, shouldn't. Bin Ladens last tape will play forever.

If Ruppersberger, Duncan, Curry and O'Malley were to gang up against Townsend, the sides would be equal. Israel and the PA will talk when each has conceded 100 percent of the other's demands. They will get a sense of urgency about the Woodrow Wilson Bridge when it falls. The schools should ban skimpy clothing, but not while the temperature is above 80. Philly always had bad turf.

George W. Bush is not George H. W. Bush. Good thing.Everyone in Baltimore, Philly and New York pays a toll to cross the Patapsco, Delaware, Hudson or East rivers, but Washingtonians don't over the Potomac and won't for the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Aren't they just special?Milosevic has one more war left in him, Montenegro, but not if our side gets there first.Cheer up. Al Gore is running.

Arafat never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. (Abba Eban said it first; no plagiarism here.) If the election is too close to call in Maryland, Bush must be a lock nationwide. West Nile virus in New York, plum pox in Pennsylvania. this globalization has gone too far. Every comparable span near Baltimore, Philly, and NY charges tolls. Why not the next Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac?

Your Nov. 26 editorial, ''Bad news for D.C.-area drivers,'' was filled with erroneous information related to the issues surrounding improvements to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in southern Prince George's County. I was appalled by The Sun's assessment that the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Coordinating Committee's recent action was ''a dirty trick."When it was formed several years ago, the coordinating committee had set as a guiding premise that marine traffic on the Potomac River should be preserved.

INJURED TROOPER Name: Tfc. Eric D. Workman Age: 36 Residence: Baltimore County Family: Divorced, with no children. Stepfather David O'Hara is a retired state police lieutenant who lives in Frederick. Workman's brother is a police officer in Fairfax County, Va. Career: Joined the state police in 1997, assigned to the Westminster barracks. A criminal investigator since 2002. Awards: Received honors for saving a suicidal person on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and for his work on a shooting investigation, 1998; Commander's Award for outstanding service and Baker Award for Highway Safety, 2000; Governor's Citation for Bravery, 2005.

Corrosion, erosion, metal fatigue and ship impacts have all resulted in bridge collapses over the years -- but each disaster is rooted in a different cause. Experts say there was nothing obviously wrong with the design or the age of the 40-year-old steel deck truss bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis. And since the 1980s, major bridge collapses have been rare. Many newer bridges have redundancies in their design and construction, so that if one support fails, the bridge won't collapse, experts say. While many older truss bridges, including the one in Minnesota, are not designed with such redundancies, that does not mean that they are less safe, experts say. "Neither design is considered safer than the other," said R. Shankar Nair, a Chicago structural engineer who has designed numerous bridges, including two along interstates that span the Mississippi River.

Thirty groups, including fishing clubs and oil companies, have formed a coalition to help the state build more fish and oyster reefs. The Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative will use charitable contributions and grants to buy used construction materials and have them hauled to Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean sites to enhance aquatic habitat. "This is an unprecedented partnership using private and public funds to restore marine habitat in Maryland," said Martin Gary, coordinator of the program for the Department of Natural Resources.

INJURED TROOPER Name: Tfc. Eric D. Workman Age: 36 Residence: Baltimore County Family: Divorced, with no children. Stepfather David O'Hara is a retired state police lieutenant who lives in Frederick. Workman's brother is a police officer in Fairfax County, Va. Career: Joined the state police in 1997, assigned to the Westminster barracks. A criminal investigator since 2002. Awards: Received honors for saving a suicidal person on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and for his work on a shooting investigation, 1998; Commander's Award for outstanding service and Baker Award for Highway Safety, 2000; Governor's Citation for Bravery, 2005.

The people in charge of replacing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge are spreading the news from New Jersey to Virginia: Stay away this weekend. Starting tonight, transportation officials will narrow Interstate 95 to one lane as it approaches the Potomac River in Maryland as they begin the process of switching southbound traffic from the old bridge to the new one. Those who insist on driving over the bridge could be in for a long wait. John R. Undeland, a spokesman for the $2.4 billion Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, said some motorists spent up to three hours in a seven-mile backup during a similar closure last year.

TV PICK--Extreme Engineering-- Replacing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac. (Discovery Channel, Sunday, 2 p.m.)

Maryland transportation officials launched a task force yesterday to examine the politically and environmentally thorny question of whether to build a new bridge or tunnel across the Chesapeake Bay over the next few decades -- and if so, where. Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan's announcement came as he released a study projecting that traffic on the Bay Bridge is expected to increase by more than 40 percent by 2025. He said motorists can expect decades of "more traffic, more congestion, more accidents, more incidents that will basically create huge backups."

IT'S HARD to imagine that a $200 billion federal transportation bill could leave out a vital project. This is a huge spending plan, after all, that had more than its share of pet projects, mostly in the states and districts of powerful legislators and their colleagues who toed the line. Maryland officials have praised the plan that evolved after an arduous process, but there are at least two reasons for concern.First, Congress is shirking an obvious responsibility by failing to pay the full cost of replacing the congested, dilapidated Woodrow Wilson Bridge that links Maryland and Virginia.

The people in charge of replacing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge are spreading the news from New Jersey to Virginia: Stay away this weekend. Starting tonight, transportation officials will narrow Interstate 95 to one lane as it approaches the Potomac River in Maryland as they begin the process of switching southbound traffic from the old bridge to the new one. Those who insist on driving over the bridge could be in for a long wait. John R. Undeland, a spokesman for the $2.4 billion Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project, said some motorists spent up to three hours in a seven-mile backup during a similar closure last year.

OXON HILL -- Construction crews lowered a thick black hose through a green latticework of reinforcing steel 16 feet beneath the surface of the frozen Potomac River, then began a continuous pour of the high-grade concrete that will form the foundation of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge. That two-day pour came to an end yesterday afternoon and with it came the first major stage of the $2.5 billion bridge project. Crews have now finished building the portion of the bridge that is under water -- the 1,069 steel and concrete piles that plunge through the river bottom into the earth and the 64 thick concrete slabs that sit atop them.

The leader of Baltimore's Senate delegation threatened yesterday to withhold support for major Washington-area transportation projects unless the city gets more money for its own transportation needs. Sen. Nathaniel J. McFadden made the pledge after hearing Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari list costly Washington-region projects in the works - the new $2.5 billion Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the $1.5 billion Intercounty Connector highway and the new $1.4 billion Purple Line for the Washington Metro System - at a Senate budget committee briefing.