Is the bridge up?

Two sources, and they are never blended. The federal operating regulation for these bridges (33 CFR 117.911) sets out the hours in which a draw need not open at all, and the hours in which it opens only on a fixed schedule. That is arithmetic on a clock: it works with no signal, it is the same for everybody, and it is what every sentence in large type on this page is computed from. The camera is the other source, and it is a photograph. It is put in front of you to look at, and nothing here reads it for you.

Because it cannot see. A still from a traffic camera would have to be interpreted to become a status, and an interpretation that is right most of the time is exactly the kind that sends somebody down a road that turns out to be stopped. The rule can prove a bridge cannot open. Nothing available here can prove one is open. So when the rule runs out, the page says the rule has run out and shows you the picture.

The feed sometimes answers with a black card instead of a frame. The page can tell the difference — the card comes through at a size no real frame on these cameras uses — so it is never shown to you as a look at the bridge. Instead the panel says the camera is not sending a picture, repeats what the rule still guarantees, and quietly tries again. A missing picture costs you the observation. It never costs you the schedule.

Two sections of the federal drawbridge code reach this coast. 33 CFR 117.911 enumerates the drawbridges of the Intracoastal Waterway between Little River and the Savannah River, and 117.915 governs the Ashley River. Every movable road bridge in either one, between Savannah and Mount Pleasant, is on this page. The Little River bridge is in the same section and is not: it is a hundred miles north at the top of the Grand Strand, which is not this coast.

Three working railroad drawbridges are also left out — on the Ashley near Drayton Hall, on the Cooper at Cordesville, and over the Savannah River at Hardeeville. They open for boats and they stop trains. Not one of them can stop a car, which is the only question this page asks.

The Causton Bluff bridge carried the Islands Expressway over the Wilmington River and was the one people in Savannah watched for. It was replaced by a fixed high-level span and the federal regulation that governed its openings was formally removed in December 2023. The Skidaway Narrows bridge on SR 204 went the same way, and its rule was struck out in January 2026. The Lazaretto Creek and Bull River crossings on the road to Tybee are fixed spans too. Savannah has no drawbridge left on a public road, which is why the southern end of this map is empty.

Every frame on this page comes live from the South Carolina Department of Transportation’s 511 camera network, which SCDOT publishes for the public. The images are theirs; they are shown here unaltered and are not stored. The bridge cameras refresh about every half minute while you have the page open, the approach cameras about every minute and only once you have scrolled to them.