sidewalk of the Steel Bridge Tuesday morning.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
Update 3:59 pm: The bridge lower deck is now open, and the city’s Diane Dulken writes to confirm that the city, not Union Pacific Railroad, is responsible for the lower-deck cameras related to this closure.
Portlanders’ unscheduled trip into the 90s extended into its fourth day Tuesday as the lower deck of the Steel Bridge, built for $10 million in 2001, remained closed due to a camera failure.
City spokeswoman Diane Dulken said Monday that Union Pacific Railroad runs the cameras, and that the problem is UP’s. The next morning, UP’s California-based spokesman Aaron Hunt said that this was not true, and that the city has been working to repair them. Update: Dulken confirmed, late Tuesday afternoon, that the railroad was correct, and the cameras are the city’s responsibility.
Dulken said Tuesday that she had no information about whether Union Pacific had been in contact with the city. She said she wasn’t aware of detour signs other than the ones at the Steel Bridge’s lower-deck gates themselves.
The cameras are important because they let the on-site bridge lift operator know when people are crossing the bridge’s lift span. The cameras have failed in the past, including a one-day closure last year.
About 3,500 people cross the Steel Bridge on bikes daily. Thousands more use it as a foot crossing for transportation or recreation.
“We don’t manage the cameras, so we’re not quite sure what’s going on with those,” Dulken said. “It’s Union Pacific, and we haven’t heard from UP.”
Union Pacific, however, disagreed.
“The cameras are the responsibility of the city of Portland,” railroad spokesman Hunt wrote in an email Tuesday. “Union Pacific reported that the cameras were not working last Saturday. The city then closed the gates for safety reasons. The city has been working to repair the cameras since that time.”
Meanwhile, Portlanders have been taking various strategies to detour across the river.
Kevin Wagoner, a Kaiser Permanente employee who bikes to work daily from southwest Portland, said Tuesday morning that it was a minor annoyance for him, but that he’d seen one man trying to open the bridge’s gates himself.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,'” Wagoner said.
Here’s a comment from Ted Buehler from yesterday’s post on this issue:
Steel Bridge upper deck sidewalks are not suitable for bicycling — far too narrow to permit safe passage. Bikes require a minimum of 4′ width. If you’re a skilled rider you can make do with less, but on the Steel Bridge sidewalk there’s no margin of error, and any twitch can bump you into the [substandard] railing posts, launch you over the [substandard] low railing and 85′ down into the Willamette River.
Best to simply take the lane. I do it regularly, just hang all the way on the right as you’re going up to the main span, slow down a bit toward the top to rest up, and wait for a gap in cars. Then scoot out into the middle of the lane and ride at your fastest comfortable speed across the main deck. I take the lane all the way to the bottom on the steep downgrade westbound, and scoot back to the right curb on the downgrade eastbound.
Another commenter, going by Vinney, reflected on Dulken’s comments from yesterday afternoon:
In situations like this I always find myself wondering if this would be acceptable if it was a car lane. What would be the city’s response then? What would be the reaction if Diane made this statement:
“People crossing the Steel Bridge Monday evening should reroute to another bridge. The bridge has been closed since Saturday evening, when a set of cameras that monitor the crossing stopped functioning. We don’t manage the cameras, so we’re not quite sure what’s going on.”
Dulken said she would ask her colleagues if there are any plans to improve communication with the railroad during future closures.
I spent a few minutes on each side of the bridge Tuesday morning to see how people were handling the closure.
stairs to the upper deck after encountering the closure.
Whatever the cause of this four-day closure, it’s an odd situation for a city whose long-term business plan depends on persuading tens of thousands of people and jobs to locate or relocate into the central city and whose official policy documents describe its transportation priorities this way:
