The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge — Interstate 10 RoadyGoat
The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge carries Interstate 10 across the Atchafalaya Swamp between Baton Rouge and Lafayette — a span of just over eighteen miles, making it the third-longest bridge in the United States and the second-longest on the entire interstate system. It opened in nineteen seventy-three. The crossing is four lanes, two in each direction, and for long stretches it has no shoulders — there is nowhere to pull off. Because of that, a single minor accident near the narrow river crossings can stop traffic for miles, with no breakdown lane and little room for emergency vehicles to get through; the sparse population of the basin makes response slower still. The speed limit on the bridge is sixty miles per hour, lowered from seventy in nineteen ninety-nine. Beneath the bridge lies the largest river swamp in America: black water, cypress draped in Spanish moss, and a dense population of alligators. Roughly thirty thousand vehicles cross it every day.
