MDTA Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge

Schnabel is proud to have played a role in the engineering of the award-winning Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge. Spanning the Potomac between Newburg, MD, and Dahlgren, VA, this two-mile long bridge opened in 2022 to provide twice the traffic capacity as its predecessor.

With its four 12-foot-wide lanes, the bridge includes shoulders to improve safety and facilitate access for emergency response, maintenance, and wide-load vehicles. It has a navigational vertical clearance of 135 feet, enabling tall ships to pass beneath it, and its gradual vertical grades allow vehicles to maintain a safe, consistent speed. In addition to the new bridge, this design-build project included new pavements, culverts, stormwater management features, toll gantries, ITS structures, DMS signs, CCTV poles, utility relocations, and other support structures.

Schnabel provided the geotechnical engineering services for this highly challenging project. For support of the bridge, the Schnabel team developed recommendations for a deep foundation, which consisted of 36-inch square and 66-inch diameter cylinder precast piles. Analysis included a study of the impacts of pile driving on the existing bridge structure. Schnabel conducted the subsurface exploration, which included test borings drilled along the river from barges, and test borings drilled at the bridge landing spans for road improvements. The Schnabel team also provided evaluations and recommendations for construction of the approach embankments, including options for mitigating settlement and negative side friction on the piles.

The $480 million bridge opened to traffic on October 12, 2022, more than two months ahead of schedule. In 2023, the project was awarded the DBIA National Merit Award – Transportation, and DBIA-Maryland awarded it the Project of the Year, the Best in Design Excellence – Engineering, and the Infrastructure – Award of Excellence.