Talk:Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

Pop Culture

"Isn't this bridge also used in.. I hate to mention it... True Lies with Arnie?"

...no, it is not. I don't know what bridge they've used in that movie, but it is definitely not the Causeway Bridge. I live in the Mandeville area and I drive across this bridge both ways on an average of seven times a month. I can tell you for sure that it isn't the Causeway (as we refer to it here), by means of the side rails that were showed in True Lies. The northbound bridge (coming up from Metairie to Mandeville) has a different type of railing (see pictures for a better description), whereas the southbound bridge (coming down from Mandeville to Metairie) has a cement-type wall of sorts on it.

They used the abandoned part of the Overseas Highway that links the Florida Keys. Alphachimera (talk) 15:43, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Longest Bridge?

I cannot find my World Almanac at the moment, but I'm really uncomfortable with the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway's "longest bridge" designation. The longest bridge is in Louisiana, but it's not obvious on any map. It's the last several miles of I-55 near the junction with I-10, which is itself a several miles long bridge at the junction with I-55. With the continuation of I-310, it's quite a distance -- longer than the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway and all one continuous bridge. I think this needs to be addressed and a new article written for that bridge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Goeverywhere (talk • contribs) 08:43, 4 September 2006

I have added a footnote from the Guinness World Records Aaron charles 18:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This bridge should be number one — but it's officially a causeway, not a bridge. - Gtxm78 (talk) 19:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Anyhow, here is the article on that bridged stretch of I-55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchac_Swamp_Bridge — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C7:8480:392:85BA:54E:1CC7:8161 (talk) 18:39, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Is there any reason that the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is mentioned? Is there some specific link with that? If not I think it should be removed. violet/riga (t) 00:24, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the above statement entirely. I am removing the reference. --Zippanova 06:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now the opening paragraph mentions Bang Na and Weinan Weihe... If there's no objection, I want to remove them and leave only the reference to the recently-completed Jiangzhou Bay Bridge (Qingdao Haiwan). There's no need to mention the third-place and sixth-place bridges, at least not with some serious contextualization. Alphachimera (talk) 15:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

---

www.thecauseway.com is down. I linked to Google's cached copy. --D. F. Schmidt (talk) 15:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Google's cached copy deleted (www.thecauseway.com isn't down anymore)129.217.129.133 12:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

More images

This article is in need of images that actually show the length of the bridge. --Jack Zhang 01:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree, it's a quite interesting bridge because it is one of, if not, the longest across water. It would be great if someone could add more images to the article. 90.184.5.10 (talk) 14:22, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Bad Link

Has anyone noticed that the Guiness Book of World Records Link is no longer valid? Searching the site, the record does not seem to be posted there any longer.

Unfortunately as the website mentions only a small percentage of records appear on the site Nil Einne 13:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

Well, this should be fairly self-evident...what's the speed limit at night, and can you find a current source? =David^(talk)_(contribs) 04:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the contradiction. --MPD ^{T / C} 06:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not a contra. Also changing facts per here. --MPD ^{T / C} 06:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Causeway night speed limit is 55 mphVesago1978 (talk) 21:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)JME1

Orders of Magnitude?

What's with the orders of magnitude link at the bottom of the page. There is no reference to this term in the rest of the article, and it doesn't really seem to apply that well anyway. Is there any reason to keep it? Jf00830 (talk) 19:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I say you take it off --Uvadaniel (talk) 20:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Is the Causeway actually a causeway, technically?

The Causeway article says: "A causeway is a road or railway route across a broad body of water or wetland raised up on an embankment." The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway doesn't appear to fit that description. I.e. it's technically a viaduct rather than a causeway. If this is correct it should probably be mentioned in a footnote. --101.109.234.193 (talk) 19:59, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point. It is a viaduct, not a causeway. Wonder how that name arose, perhaps in an earlier time when the naming scheme wasn't so precise. Or PR purposes since causeway sounds better than "duct". Would be interesting to find out. -- GreenC 21:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm actually removing the line about it being a viaduct from the article on the grounds that the viaduct article that is linked clearly states that a viaduct is a columned bridge "primarily over land", which this clearly is not. 199.190.61.128 (talk) 04:39, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

See Viaduct#Over_water. However I think we need a source that calls it a viaduct. -- GreenC 13:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

• "The world's longest road viaduct is the 23.87 mi. (38.4 km) second Lake Pontchartrain Causeway linking VTOL Lewisburg and Metairie, Louisiana", The Rand McNally encyclopedia of transportation, page 246 (snippet view) -- GreenC 14:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

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Replacing the header image?

The header image is severe;y outdated and the southern end of the Causeway doesn't look like it anymore. Should it be replaced? I can probably go out and take a few pics of the Causeway from the Mandeville Lakefront, but I think it would be better to use the sattelite image of Lake Ponchartrain instead to show its size. JungleEntity (talk) 20:52, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

"Curvature" photo

Take a look at one of the photos near the bottom of this article, with the caption "This photo of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway demonstrates the Earth's curvature." That photo has (at least) four obvious and nonsensical distortions of the roadway and may not even be a true un-doctored photo. I suggest that it be removed. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 13:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Removed after lack of comment; that photo clearly was clearly the result of some sort of computing error. There are plenty of other photos anyway. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 20:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The photo is real. The purpose of the photo was to demonstrate the curvature of the earth as dramatically as possible. Here's the source of either that photo or a very similar one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUy9ryPPiwI

Here's a link to the app that can be used (click on "Soundly"): http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Finding+the+curvature+of+the+Earth

Given the radius of Earth being 3959 miles and standard refraction (used by surveyors), the formula for the drop that is seen is d = 6.707x^2, where x is the number of miles away from the starting point and d is the amount of drop. For example, if you place a 6 mile straight edge on the surface of the ocean tangent to the earth and touching the earth at its midpoint (so that it extends 3 miles away from the tangent point in either direction), then d = 6.707(3)^2 = 60. Thus, the straight edge will be 60 inches off the water at either of its end points. The causeway is about 23 miles long, so we can use this formula to approximate how much the bridge drops from a tangent at one end of the bridge. We have d = 6.707(23)^2 = 3548 inches, or about 300 feet.

Alternatively, we can calculate the sagitta that we would see for a 23 mile long bridge, and that would be 73 ft. If a car is 5ft high, then the bridge should appear to bulge by a height of about 14 cars stacked on top of each other when you look down the bridge as if sighting down a rifle. Pixel counting is probably not as effective as the perspective simulation I linked, but if the bridge bulges by 14 car lengths in the middle if you drew a straight line from end to end, then the picture looks about right.

I was disappointed when the picture was removed from the page since it so clearly demonstrated the curve of the earth. What are the 4 distortions you are talking about? EasternWesterner (talk) 23:32, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

This is not how the bridge appears to the naked eye. It is a simulation with exaggeration to make the curvature more pronounced. The word "demonstrates" is a problem since this is not an article to teach readers about the curvature of the earth. You could say instead "shows", but that's a problem because it's not really showing how it looks, readers would be misled. You could say "simulates", but then the question is why it belongs in this article at all. I would suggest the photo belongs in curvature of the earth, as a curvature demonstration/simulation, with accompanying text in the main body that explains in more detail what is happening in the photo. -- GreenC 20:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

This is how the bridge appears to anyone using a camera with a telephoto lens. It is not a simulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion#Technical_background 100.35.197.187 (talk) 01:07, 18 August 2024 (UTC)