This is one scary tall narrow bridge. The high volume of traffic doesn't help things, either. Just as I was taking the final photo, a train was inching its way across the bridge. That was a noisy, loud, shaky experience even when standing on the ground 150 feet below the tracks.

It is hard to grasp how big this monster really is. The deck is flat to accommodate rail traffic, where high bridges like this normally have a hump shape to them. The auto ramps go up hill at a rather strong grade, while the rail road approaches are much more gradual, and extend miles to each side of the bridge. The piers are equally massive, but much of that structure is below water. Since New Orleans is built on silt, bedrock is over 1000 feet down, impractical to use for bridge foundations. The piers depend on their size and mass to stay in place.

This bridge has been rated as "unacceptable" and is part of a high priority project to rebuild. The current plan is to remove the existing highway lanes, build two new steel structures parallel to the current superstructure, and route the highways over these new superstructures.

Note that there are two bridges over the Mississippi in Louisiana that are named after Huey P. Long, longtime governor of that state. The other is a very similarly configured bridge in Baton Rouge.