The Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge is the country's first extradosed cable-stayed bridge and Connecticut's "Gateway to New England," created with a signature design that pays tribute to military veterans and to the events of December 7, 1941. Named in 1995 by a state legislative act to mark the fifty-fourth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and to honor those who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, it became a distinctive landmark in the New Haven skyline with a nautical theme recalling the smokestacks of a battleship. The bridge carries ten lanes of I-95 traffic over the Quinnipiac River, connecting the I-95/I-91/Route 34 interchange with New Haven's east shore area. Its main span is 1,013 feet long, made up of a 515-foot center span and two 249-foot end spans, with reinforced concrete tower piers, cable stays, and anchor piers supporting a cast-in-place concrete segmental superstructure. Its extradosed hybrid design combines features of a concrete segmental bridge and a cable-stayed bridge, allowing shorter towers to remain below the flight path of Tweed New Haven Airport and a shallower superstructure that maximizes vertical clearance for marine traffic below. On Friday, June 22, 2012, a dedication and ribbon cutting marked the opening of the northbound span, with more than 300 guests including four Pearl Harbor survivors, Navy veterans, and government and state officials. During the ceremony, the president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association read the names of the seventeen Connecticut men who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, each name accompanied by the ringing of a bell, and surviving Connecticut Pearl Harbor veterans Floyd Welch, Jack Stoeber, William Lehr, and Thomas Nerkowski took part in a wreath-laying ceremony. On select holidays including Memorial Day, Independence Day, September 11th Remembrance Day, Veteran's Day, and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, the bridge is lit in patriotic red, white, and blue with memorial light cannons aimed into the sky in honor of those who have served the country, past, present, and future.