Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991 TAG: 9102240086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is a bridge without charm; a bridge that has grown old without growing quaint; a bridge that is only marginally necessary, having lived out its usefulness to motor traffic about the time Henry Street's life dried up and blew away.
The First Street bridge is an unhospitable hodgepodge of steel and stone, timbers and asphalt, stretching across railroad tracks that run like clumsy stitches across the city's breast.
And if it is wide as a raw noodle, it shimmies like a boiled noodle when a diesel locomotive passes beneath its exposed belly.
But there is hope now for the bridge too far gone.
It closes Monday at 9 a.m.
You may want to go brave the trestle one more time right now before you forget. You won't get another chance until the $200,000 worth of work is finished around Memorial Day.
Don't get too excited.
Don't think the bridge's deck is going to get wider so that an oncoming Chevrolet pickup truck (1953-75) doesn't nudge your miserable little Mitsubishi off the edge. That's still going to happen.
Don't think that the bridge is going to have a new sidewalk that isn't made of wood slick as ice when it gets wet. It'll be wood.
Don't think that the steep hill on the downtown side of the bridge will somehow be flattened. It won't be.
In fact, the bridge is going to get even steeper.
Norfolk Southern Corp. needs 3 1/2 feet more clearance above its tracks so that flatbed railcars stacked two-high with truck cartons can pass beneath. So far, 21 low overhangs in Virginia have been blasted to smithereens to make way for the new two-story trains.
The First Street bridge is the last obstacle between Bristol and Norfolk, the railroad says.
The bridge reconstruction should accomplish a few things. First of all, it could turn Roanoke's rush 19 minutes (we aren't a big enough town for a full rush hour) into a rush 24 minutes.
Motorists will be forced to use the Fifth Street bridge to the west, the Hunter Viaduct to the south or Richmond to the east - when all our prized One-Income-No-Kids (OINKs) get ticked off and move.
NS claims it will try to limit the number of trains that plod across the Second Street grade crossing near the transportation museum during the rush quarter-hour. About 60 trains cross that street daily, most when they see me coming.
And finally, after construction, the trajectory will be ideal for cars with a good running start to accelerate, hit the ski-ramp egg noodle hypotenuse bridge and go airborne with just the perfect lift to carry them onto the roof of the city school administration building on Orange Avenue. Previously, cruise Fords have only fallen harmlessly in the Civic Center parking lot.
At least, though, the railroad is paying the bill, which means we taxpayers will have more money available to bleed to save the railroad's former hotel.
So for all the inconvenience this will cause you, just think what'll happen in three months when the new, improved bridge reopens.
It'll be worse than ever.
by CNB