Bridges to Planet Earth

There’s quite a bridge-repair-rebuilding bandwagon in the wake of the collapse of the I-35W bridge. I wish some people would stop to think about what they’re asking for with all their talk about safety and efficiency, though.

Nobody wants bridges like the I-35W one to go crashing into the river, and it will be important to know why it happened. The lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped people from proposing action, though.

I got to thinking about some of the bridges I’ve encountered on my bicycle rides. One that came to mind is this bridge across the Buffalo River in south-central Tennesse, which I rode across in late March 2006. I’ve already written about the day’s ride here.

I had been riding up and down hills into the wind all day, and stopped here at the Flatwoods Bridge for a breather. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but one car that came along stopped. The driver asked if I needed help, but I was fine — just taking a break.

On the other side of the bridge I saw this survey marker. Uh, oh, I thought. I’ll bet they’re planning to take out this attractive truss bridge and replace it with a soulless modern concrete one.

Survey markers can be an ominous sign. Native Americans in pre-settlement days generally knew what surveyors meant. It meant that the Americans really were going to come and take the land that had been signed away at the last treaty meeting. There were often conflicts with surveyors. One such conflict gave its name to my town of Battle Creek, Michigan. But resistance was futile then, and probably is now too. We can still mourn the loss, though.

It wasn’t until today that I got around to checking to see if this bridge at Flatwoods is now threatened by the safety-efficiency people. I looked it up at bridgehunter.com My finding: It’s in Perry County, Tennessee. It was built in 1939, and it’s not on any civil engineer’s hit list. It says: “Inspection (as of 2000) /Appraisal: Not deficient /Sufficiency rating: 58.30″. Whew!

When I’m riding or driving, I often like to think of the terrain in terms of the river systems, minus the layers of modern crud that obscure it. (Never mind that I take advantage of some of these modern layers to get around on my bike!) I like to encourage other people to think that way, too. It helps connect us to the history and to the natural environment a lot more than when we just get in our car and go across the country from one Interstate exit number to another.

I like roads that are built close to the ground, so I can experience the terrain. With the modern interstate system, you could just as well be traveling at 30,000 feet for all the sense of place you get out of it. And modern concrete bridges don’t even let you take a look at the rivers you pass over — it makes it so you hardly even notice they exist. But the safety-efficiency people are always trying to disconnect us from the planet: Widening roads (which sometimes is good for bicycling, and sometimes not) cutting down the trees lining the country roads, cutting and filling the high and low places, and separating us from the land and water with blank, bland, concrete slabs — all for purposes of safety and efficiency. Some of that has to be done, but I don’t think it’s healthy that safety and efficiency are always given the last word.

I’ll rant some more about this when I put on my Reticulator hat.