Bridging the gap

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"And of particular concern to the editor of our local paper and his daily commute — what are we doing with the Eighth Street Bridge?"

— Mayor Shari Decter Hirst, 2012 State of the City Address

Ahh, the power of a couple of tweets. Over the past while, I have made known my displeasure on Twitter whenever the city’s aging north-south overpass is closed for repairs.

While the closure of the bridge is really no more than a matter of inconvenience for me, it could be a more serious situation if a train has dissected the city at 26th Street and Pacific Avenue and the traffic is thick on the Daly Overpass at 18th Street.

Then the only viable north-south route is the First Street Bridge and the pitted asphalt surface the province to date has refused to fix.

Brandon is a city sliced in half by the Canadian Pacific Rail mainline.

The Brandon Sun offices are just on the south side.

My house is just on the north side.

And trains have gotten longer. CP Rail’s long-train strategy implemented in the past year has seen average freight trains stretched to more than four kilometres from the 1.54 kms seen previously.

According to the Financial Post, CP continues to "push the boundaries of how long it can build its trains" by developing a "distributed-power" system, where the locomotives are interspersed throughout the full length of the train and connected remotely to help accelerate and brake.

That helps to cut down on the forces that try to rip the trains apart and also make it easier to control.

But I digress.

While we needn’t overly worry about the safety of these bell-ringing, horn-blowing horizontal stretchers, they do make for very long waits at our busy level crossing at 26th Street.

So just imagine what’s going to happen when the Eighth Street Bridge is taken out of commission for however long it will take to repair/replace it to serve a few more decades.

Not only will a great shadowy hangout for our huff, puff and pour tourism sector be wiped out, but Brandon is going to be sliced into two solitudes that will be the envy of Quebec.

So what exactly is going on with Brandon’s mid-town hump? The one built in 1934, with a new portion constructed in 1968 and a rehab in 1999?

The one that in a 2009 inspection showed both the superstructure and substructures exhibiting areas of severe deterioration?

The one that was originally supposed to be replaced as early as 2013? Well, not much now.

In her annual State of the City address to 386 folks at a recent Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon — after she tipped her hat to my tweets — Shari Decter Hirst said the project is back to square one.

"We had a look at some options — we had alarmed some residents unnecessarily — we sent the consultants back to the drawing board for another look," she said.

"The one thing we know for sure is that the condition of the bridge has to be addressed soon."

The folks who were alarmed became so after seeing several conceptual drawings for the new bridge at an open house at city hall in the spring.

It seems a couple of the plans would have the new bridge and the approaches plow right through their homes or businesses.

A first open house was held in July 2011 at the Riverbank Discovery Centre.

That’s also when the 8thstreetbridge.com website was launched "to allow an open forum for discussion."

Concerns over the existing Eighth Street Bridge that flowed from the event involved: the steepness of the bridge; icy winter driving conditions; sidewalks not being separate from traffic; bridge not being wide enough; and unsafe intersection at the north side of the bridge at Pacific Avenue.

Fair enough. So it sounds as if we need a much more substantial structure than the current bridge, which comprises two 3.65-metre wide lanes and one 1.5-metre wide sidewalk.

The condition of the bridge only allows for use by buses, cars, pedestrians and cyclists.

So then came the second open house in March. That’s when a few "storyboards" were released.

And that’s when the earth shook around the Eighth Street Bridge — those residents and businesses that could be torn down to make way for one of four options were indeed "alarmed."

I’m not quite sure what folks figured would happen when there was talk of a new bridge — surely they had to have some idea the construction alone would force displacement of many property owners, not even mentioning the final design footprint.

Interestingly, the city has decided to tuck those drawings away — the line from city hall now is they "were conceptual drawings issued by the consultant for the purpose of stimulating community feedback and weren’t necessarily meant to be "set in stone" options.

City communications director Allison Collins told me this week that following the open houses, Dillon Consulting "has now finalized results of the community feedback and are currently working on an additional proposal that would minimize the concerns that were heard from the public."

This new option will come before city council in coming weeks, so "the city would prefer not to have outdated and potentially irrelevant PDFs published in the Brandon Sun that might confuse people."

Well, it probably would have been best to do that in the first place. But that’s just water, err... trains under the bridge.

So disregarding Collins’ concerns, I dug deeper and finally found some of the original Dillon Consulting drawings.

I remind folks that these are "outdated" but I feel can still serve as fodder for discussion:

• A) Rehab/Replace Structure "As-is": To replace the 1934 bridge and rehabilitate the 1968 bridge in the same location, with the same vertical alignment. Features: Lower cost, lower property impact at south end of bridge, but narrow sidewalk remains and bridge slopes remain very steep for vehicles and pedestrians.

• B) Rehab/Replace plus Pedestrian Bridge: To replace the 1934 bridge and rehab the 1968 bridge in the same location. A new active transportation bridge would be built next to the existing bridge. Features: New pedestrian bridge improves safety for all users; existing vehicle lanes widened; and lower property impact at south end of bridge.

• C) New Bridge Aligned with Ninth Street: To build a new bridge that lines up on the south end at Ninth Street. Features: Improved traffic flow at Pacific and Ninth Street; wide sidewalk is good for pedestrians and cyclists; negative impacts to several businesses north and south of bridge and; several residences at north end of bridge impacted.

• D) New Bridge at Fifth Street: To demolish the bridge at Eighth Street and build a new bridge on Fifth Street. Features: Bridge moved closer to edge of the neighbourhood rather then in the middle; steep slopes reduced and safety improved; wide sidewalk is good for pedestrians and cyclists; and negative impacts to several businesses south of bridge.

Now none of these are perfect. So I’m cheered to see the consultants have gone back to come up with an additional proposal.

Barring having the completed bridge floated by helium airships into place in the exact same shape of the current one, I’m not sure how the consultants are planning to "minimize the concerns that were heard from the public."

It’s simple. Any new bridge is going to result in some people losing their homes or businesses.

While this is a scary thought in a city with a severe housing shortage, the quality of most of the houses alongside the bridge is modest at best.

And none of the businesses that could be affected that I can see really rely on their existing geographic location for their livelihood.

But as long a fair market value — or more — is offered in the expropriation, it’s the price people pay to live in a city.

In my opinion unless your house was there prior to the 1934 construction of the bridge, then you always had to know that one day the thing would be rebuilt or replaced.

It’s kind of like moving onto a flood plain. Oh right, the northern end of the bridge is actually on a flood plain. And those homes in question were evacuated as a precaution in the historic flood of 2011.

The city is growing and that means our infrastructure must also expand. I’ve lived through several major bridge construction projects in Winnipeg — the largest being the stylish Promenade Louis Riel at The Forks— and all were super controversial.

But now all are embraced, with the Promenade being heralded as a city landmark.

So for the City of Brandon to do the new Eighth Street Bridge project properly, it’s going to require some vision — and political guts.

In my perfect world, our new Eighth Street Bridge needs to be a continuation of Ninth Street that curves in a slow "S" shape to connect with the current base at its north end.

To the east of that would be a separate pedestrian/active transportation bridge that would link up with the laneway behind the Crystal Hotel and Paragon Lofts that connects to Rosser Avenue (part of that is a barely used parking lot for a light industry).

So basically Option C — with a twist — is my preferred choice.

I’m hoping the twist — chicane, if you will — could mitigate the collateral damage to the businesses and homes that are snugged up beside the bridge.

However, there’s is no original plan that won’t require some expropriation.

Interestingly, the original Option C would also appear to have a negative impact on the Crystal Hotel — while not considered as big a problem as the fleabag former Beaubier or condemned Brandon Inn, it still racks up the frequent flier points for police visits. So that might not be a bad thing.

The Eighth Street Bridge is a critical downtown linkage. It currently serves as the only direct connection from the north into the slowly growing Renaissance District (throw a casino in there, and this bridge will be even more crucial for downtown movement).

It can also be developed into a fantastic link to the city’s park and river bicycle and walking pathways.

The city has to replace the bridge before it falls down.

It also has to be replaced before the province decides to eliminate the dangerous bottleneck caused on the three-lane Daly Overpass at 18th Street and replace that bridge.

And while this current city council has sure found enough ways to upset large pots of citizenry for many different reasons — some great and good, some just goofy gaffes — the Eighth Street Bridge project is one that will show exactly how strong this group around the council table is.

At least this is one project that, hopefully, won’t be hijacked by the "nameless, faceless critics in this town" who seem to attack thinkers and their ideas just for the sake of being negative.

The level of mud-slinging and name-calling over some proposals out of city hall and by the community lately has been embarrassing and has dragged the level of political discourse into a sandbox outside a daycare centre.

This bridge issue is quite simple. We need a new one. And we need it soon.

Build the best design we can afford and try not to displace too many people and businesses. But don’t let emotions or backroom political tomfoolery trip up the process.

Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition May 19, 2012