Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) is a 37 km long fixed link crossing the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and connecting the Delmarva Peninsula's Eastern Shore of Virginia with Virginia Beach and the metropolitan area of Hampton Roads, Virginia. The bridge-tunnel was opened on April 15, 1964. The bridge-tunnel originally combined 19 km of trestle, two (1.6 km) long tunnels, four artificial islands, two high-level bridges, approximately 3.2 km of causeway, and 8.9 km of approach roads, crossing the Chesapeake Bay and preserving traffic on the Thimble Shoals and Chesapeake shipping channels. The system remains one of only eight bridge-tunnel systems in the world, three of which are located in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The bridge-tunnel saves motorists 153 km and 1½ hours on a trip between Virginia Beach/Norfolk and points north and east of the Delaware Valley without going through the traffic congestion in the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. Since it opened, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel has been crossed by more than 100 million vehicles. It was officially named the Lucius J. Kellam Jr. Bridge-Tunnel in August 1987 after one of the civic leaders who had long worked for its development and operation. However, it continues to be best known as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Following the CBBT's opening in 1964, it was selected by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as "One of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World" in a worldwide competition that included more than one hundred major projects.