Take the elevator to the top of Jacksonville’s tallest building, the Bank of America Tower, look out the window, and notice our number of the week:
Nine of Jacksonville’s bridges are visible from the skyscraper, according to Visit Jacksonville. For long-time Jaxsons, that includes the seven bridges River City is best known for, plus two bonus bridges: the railroad bridge through Downtown and the Ortega River Bridge.
Jacksonville is a city built around the St. Johns River — which means that if you want to go anywhere, chances are pretty good you’ll drive across a bridge to get there.
The Florida Department of Transportation tracks the traffic on its roads with a statistic called AADT — or Annual Average Daily Traffic. In other words, how many cars you can expect to see crossing each bridge on any given day. The figure helps traffic engineers and city planners prioritize repairs, as well as which areas might need new roads to ease congestion and so on.
Here’re the most recent AADT numbers for Jacksonville’s seven most famous bridges: