American River Bridges: Hazel Avenue Bridge

This is actually called the American River Bridge but to avoid confusion with the many other bridges with the same name, I'm renaming it after the road that it carries.

Continuing the themes of the tremendous demand that growing communities place on more highway capacity, we can see the Hazel Avenue Bridge is getting widened. The bridge is just downstream from the Nimbus Dam and about four miles downstream from the Lake Natoma Crossing (and three miles upstream from the Sunrise Blvd Crossing). Moreover, this is where the American River Bike Trail (a much used recreational and alternative commuter resource) crosses the river. The widening will increase the capacity of the road and provide better safety for cyclists.

The existing bridge is a four span reinforced concrete box girder structure on single column piers built in 1966 (see below).  The widening will increase the deck from four to six lanes and support it on two column piers. The widening will also provide little bastions for cyclists and pedestrians to move off the traveled way and enjoy the view.

American River Bridges: Hazel Avenue Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.