[1][2] It was originally a combination railroad and automobile bridge, with two pairs of railroad tracks in the center of the lift span and automobile lanes straddling it.

The railroad is no longer there, its place on the bridge taken by additional vehicular lanes.

The Upper Ninth Ward, which includes neighborhoods such as the Bywater neighborhood, is on the upriver side of the bridge, and the Lower Ninth Ward on the downriver side.

In the aftermath of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many people took refuge from the flooding atop the bridge, and people from the severely flooded Lower Ninth Ward used it to get to the dry, high ground near the river on the upriver side of the bridge.

For some months after the storm the bridge was the only open direct route between the Lower Ninth Ward and the rest of New Orleans.