Steel Bridge lower deck will close for inspection at 7 am Wednesday

an inspection? what do they suspect is wrong with it?

you don’t close a major commuting route during rush hour for a routine inspection…

…so has PBOT put up detour signage for the bike traffic and so drivers understand? This is a planned problem, correct?

Did PBOT have no advanced notice?

If it was the top deck being closed (you know… where the real valid traffic is (oozing sarcasm) ) there would have been warning signs days in advance.

Sure this is UPRR’s bridge that they are magnanimously allowing the city to use it just seems that as a good neighbor they could stand to warn us of anything other than emergency maintenance.

Of course, as old as this bridge is, almost anything could look like a fall-in-to-the-river emergency, especially when train cars carry twice the tonnage per square foot versus a fully laden truck.

PBOT tweeted about the closure on the 11th, but some signage on the bridge would have been nice.

I rode across the bridge at 615am this morning along side a full length Amtrak. If there was REALLY a safety concern, they wouldn’t have allowed the Amtrak train to cross.

File this one in the “we still have power over you” category.

Slow news day. I just rode south on the east bank esplanade and crossed on the Hawthorne bridge – no biggie.

Words to live by:
Hanlon’s razor “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

I don’t think that either UPRR or PBOT is maliciously acting this way or even does these thoughtless things intentionally.

The more logical conclusion is that it simply doesn’t occur to them that bicycle and pedestrian traffic is not 100% recreational.
It must be a societal disconnect between “us & them” where the idea of relying on anything other than a car is as alien as breathing methane and eating diamonds.

Yes, a relatively small portion of society is inconvenienced but that doesn’t make it not worth warning about and trying to avoid.
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” does not morally nor ethically legitimize thoughtless abuse of minorities of any stripe.

Oh, the atrocity.

Another Approach 🙂

Although I also am annoyed at this evidence that simply shows that few at PBOT, City of Portland or really anywhere else give any thought at all to cyclists and that they really don’t see cyclists as deserving the same level of consideration and planning as motorists. I have a happier idea.

This is partly a result of one of the major, huge advantages of bicycles and we should find a way to exploit situations exactly like this! Cars are impossible heavy, wide and awkward with very poor maneuverability. What we are seeing in instance like this is that when you don’t plan for bicycle detours nothing bad happens! When you have unexpected detours and road closures with cars you get a jammed up mess of cars going no where. That isn”t simply because of the volume of cars. It is because of the lack of maneuverability and the sheer volume of space that cars take up.

The huge advantages of bikes, as mentioned on these pages before, is that turning around is simple, negotiating minor obstacles is simple, and the space required to ride one is 1/5 the width of a car. Even if 50 cyclist rolled up the gate at the broadway bridge this morning at the same time, they could all maneuver getting turned around and back underway in a few seconds. Try that with automobiles!

From the west, encountering this closure represents sub 3 minutes of extra navigation/pedaling. I’d love for the collective of cyclists to spend energy on other things than this.