Friday, December 4, 2009

Abandoned Railroad Bridge Returns


The long-abandoned Big Four Railroad Bridge has been slated to be repurposed as a pedestrian walkway/bikeway, making travel between Louisville and Indiana fun.


When I first moved to Louisville several years ago, everyone was saying the pedestrian bridge in Butchertown was coming "any day now". After a couple of years I gave up on it, so it pleases me to see that they're finally making some progress on the construction of the on-ramp that will enable feet, bikes, and wheelchairs to make the trek across the Ohio River.

However, the trajectory of the on-ramp is such a wide one that simply getting to the bridge looks almost as long a journey as crossing the bridge itself. I was rather hoping for an elevator or something.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Perhaps that is the temporary on-ramp for the construction workers? Because if one were to walk the distance covered in THAT loop, you could make it to Lexington and back ...

JSH said...

Unfortunately, it is indeed the ramp for pedestrians to access the bridge. There's a sign nearby showing a rendering of what the finished project will look like, showing people trekking up this crazy spiral.

Nicosia said...

That is awesome! I have passed by that bridge many times and always had the urge to climb it :)

Jax Rhapsody said...

I think I might make that trek tomorrow and write about it in my blog. That is to much of a ramp to walk but if you think about it looking at the hieght of the bridge, it would be hard to make a shorter one unless it was based on the highway pedestrain bridges.