14th Street bridges

The 14th Street bridges are a set of adjacent five road and rail bridges that cross the Potomac River, connecting Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C. A major gateway for automotive, bicycle and rail traffic, the bridge complex is named for 14th Street (U.S. Route 1), which feeds automotive traffic into it on the D.C. end.

The complex contains three four-lane automobile bridges—including, from west to east, one southbound, one bi-directional, and one northbound—that carry Interstate 395 (I-395) and U.S. Route 1 (US 1) traffic, as well as a bicycle and pedestrian lane on the southbound bridge. In addition, the complex contains two rail bridges, one of which carries the Yellow Line of the Washington Metro; the other of which, the only mainline rail crossing of the Potomac River to Virginia, carries a CSX Transportation rail line. The five bridges, from west to east are the George Mason Memorial Bridge, the Rochambeau Bridge, the Arland D. Williams, Jr. Memorial Bridge, the Charles R. Fenwick Bridge and the Long Bridge. In aerial photos, shadows caused by a large, concrete divider on the bi-directional Rochambeau Bridge create the illusion of two, two-lane bridges, but this is in fact, a single, four-lane structure.

On January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 clipped the 14th Street Bridge, the northbound I-395 span of the complex, during rush hour and crashed into the Potomac River; this killed four people on the bridge, along with 74 passengers and crew on the aircraft. The repaired span was renamed in honor of Arland D. Williams Jr., a passenger on the plane who survived the initial crash, but drowned after repeatedly passing a helicopter rescue line to other survivors.