Would you look at that. The Arlington Bridge could be in for some major renovations that will allow it to stand for another few years - something it has stubbornly done since the 1940s.
People either love or hate the Arlington Street Overpass, as it is officially called. I have great memories as a kid of driving over it in the back of the family car and developed a respect for it and its architecture after writing a four-part history of it back in 2011.
The bridge had many detractors from the time it was first proposed in 1910 and it never fulfilled its main purpose of being a second streetcar connection to and from downtown. It was totally unsuited to go over a rail yard, (I do believe it was intended for another site in North Africa, though not the Nile), and a couple of decades in started needing major repairs.
Despite public calls for its replacement as early as the 1940s, the bridge has stubbornly stood its ground. It has seen most of its compatriots come and go, the Louise was largely built the same year and only the Redwood is older, and in the case of the Salter Street (now Slaw Rebchuk) Bridge and the dual Disraeli spans, new bridges came and went during its lifetime.
People either love or hate the Arlington Street Overpass, as it is officially called. I have great memories as a kid of driving over it in the back of the family car and developed a respect for it and its architecture after writing a four-part history of it back in 2011.
The bridge had many detractors from the time it was first proposed in 1910 and it never fulfilled its main purpose of being a second streetcar connection to and from downtown. It was totally unsuited to go over a rail yard, (I do believe it was intended for another site in North Africa, though not the Nile), and a couple of decades in started needing major repairs.
Despite public calls for its replacement as early as the 1940s, the bridge has stubbornly stood its ground. It has seen most of its compatriots come and go, the Louise was largely built the same year and only the Redwood is older, and in the case of the Salter Street (now Slaw Rebchuk) Bridge and the dual Disraeli spans, new bridges came and went during its lifetime.
Back in 2014 there was yet another plan afoot to replace the Disraeli Bridge. It was predicated by a 2013 report to a council committee about its condition that stated: "The Public Works Department has already started planning for the replacement or decommissioning of the existing overpass which must be undertaken by 2020." (The exact condition of the bridge and how important 2020 is is unclear as the more detailed studies used to make this report are not public.)
I sat on the Project Advisory Committee for the A Better Bridge for Arlington process.
One thing that was made clear to us was that the 2020 deadline for the start of construction of a new bridge was key as the bridge’s functional life would come to an end then. If there was no bridge in place, or at least being worked on, by that time it would be a case that it would be closed and the two neighbourhoods cut off.
On several occasions I brought up the question of maintaining the existing span as the active transportation route across the yards. It made sense to me as it was the vibrations from traffic that were the main enemy of the existing bridge and the new span was going to be built adjacent to it anyway. The response was that the bridge could not even be salvaged for that. It would have to go in 2020.
The committee made its recommendations to the city, which were pretty much ignored as it chose its own design and even then the bridge's replacement never made it into the capital budget.
Source: Merx
My expectation was that, to save the ire of the public, at some point in 2020 the bridge would close for temporary repairs or inspection and simply never reopen again.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that the city has put out a rather lengthy tender for the repair of the bridge. This isn’t the usual fixing holes in the road deck. This is some substantial structural work.
It isn't known how long these repairs are expected to extend its functional life of the bridge for. I imagine that will come out in a future media story.
It seems the Arlington Bridge may have dodged another bullet.
© 2020, Christian Cassidy
No comments:
Post a Comment