Funding Raising financial support for a new eight-lane bridge over the Cooper River was a struggle 20 years in the making, prolonged by the state's insistence that it could not afford such a bridge and by Charleston's reluctance to provide any funds for the project. Several proposals were made for a toll bridge, but the mayors of Charleston and Mount Pleasant objected. When officials revealed in 1995 that the
Grace Bridge scored a 4 out of 100 for safety and integrity, retired US Congressman
Arthur Ravenel Jr. ran for the
South Carolina Senate with a goal of solving the funding problem. He helped to establish the S.C. Infrastructure Bank and worked with local, state, and federal officials to create partnerships that helped to materialize the final funding. The State Infrastructure Bank (SIB) budgeted $325 million to accompany $96.6 million from the
Federal Highway Administration. The project did not become a reality, however, until the SIB agreed to commit to a $215 million federal loan, provided that
Charleston County would contribute $3 million a year for 25 years, including an 8.33% sales tax increase, to the federal loan, as well as yearly payments from the SCDOT and State Ports Authority. The overall price of the bridge totaled around $700 million. Due to his efforts in passing laws for the new bridge's funding, fellow lawmakers voted to name bridge the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Some felt that the bridge should not be named after Ravenel, with the head of the South Carolina infrastructure bank saying in 1999, "Certainly, Arthur Ravenel is a fine, decent person, but that bridge is bigger than any one individual and it should reflect all the qualities of the state and not some state senator who happens to be in the Legislature the time the structure is being built."
Design The Ravenel Bridge is a
cable-stayed design with two diamond-shaped towers, each high. The total length of the structure is , with the mainspan stretching between the towers. Suspending the deck above the river are 128 individual cables anchored to the inside of the diamond towers. The roadway consists of eight lanes, four in each direction plus a bicycle and pedestrian path, which runs along the south edge of the bridge overlooking Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge structure is designed to withstand shipping accidents and the natural disasters that have plagued Charleston's history. The span is designed to endure wind gusts in excess of , far stronger than those of the worst storm in Charleston's history,
Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Engineers also considered the
1886 earthquake that nearly leveled Charleston. The Ravenel Bridge is designed to withstand an earthquake of approximately 7.4 on the
Richter magnitude scale without total failure. To protect the bridge from errant ships, the towers are flanked by rock islands. Ships will run aground on the islands before colliding with the towers. The bridge was designed for traffic of 100,000 vehicles per day, and forecasted to reach that number in 2030. , the bridge was carrying an average of 96,300 vehicles per day. The path was included in design of the new bridge because of grassroots efforts by groups, such as a fifth grade class at a local elementary school.
Construction Groundbreaking on the bridge occurred in 2001 in Mount Pleasant. The bridge was built as a
design–build project, meaning that one contract was signed to both design and construct the bridge. This meant that construction could begin even while the design was not yet finalized. The bridge was built by a
joint venture of two major construction firms operating under the name
Palmetto Bridge Constructors. The joint venture partners were
Tidewater Skanska of
Norfolk, Virginia and Flatiron Constructors of
Longmont, Colorado. The construction joint venture hired
Parsons Brinckerhoff to complete the design.
T.Y. Lin International provided design review and construction engineering and field inspection services. For the sake of simplifying labor and equipment resources, Palmetto Bridge Constructors actually managed the building of the bridge as five separate projects (the two highway interchanges at either end of the bridge, the two approach spans, and the cable-stayed span) going on simultaneously. By the summer of 2002, the foundations for the towers and most of the piers were in place, and the rock islands were completed. The steel and concrete towers began to ascend from the islands soon after. Originally, each of the towers was to be topped with a multicolored LED "beacon", but public opinion caused this plan to be scrapped. The fast-paced construction schedule led to contractors to use a self-climbing form system to build the towers. The formwork, supplied by
PERI, provided a solution to meet the tight construction tolerances and provide safe access for workers laboring hundreds of feet in the air. The self-climbing system meant that the tower cranes did not have to spend time raising the forms after each segment of concrete hardened, and instead could be better used to haul material from barges below. The first cables were hung from the towers in 2004—as a time-saving measure, this was done before the towers were wholly completed. Sections of the deck were built outward from each of the towers as more cables were hung. The decks of the approaches were taking shape as well. Construction of part of the roadway actually occurred over the top of the old cantilever bridges, which remained open to traffic without interruption. A ceremony was held in March 2005, when the last slab of the deck was added, thus making the bridge "complete". But paving, installation of lights and signs, and cleanup meant that the bridge would not open for another four months. Following a week-long celebration that included a public bridge walk, concerts, dinners, and fireworks, the bridge was dedicated and opened on July 16, 2005—one year ahead of schedule and under budget. The bridge was featured on the TV show
Extreme Engineering. ==Bridge Run==