Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 4

The Steel Bridge is a through truss, double-deck vertical-lift bridge across the Willamette

River in Portland, Oregon, United States, opened in 1912. Its lower deck carries railroad and
bicycle/pedestrian traffic, while the upper deck carries road traffic (on the Pacific Highway West No.
1W, former Oregon Route 99W) and light rail (MAX), making the bridge one of the most multimodal
in the world. It is the only double-deck bridge with independent lifts in the world [1] and the second
oldest vertical-lift bridge in North America, after the nearby Hawthorne Bridge. The bridge links
the Rose Quarter and Lloyd District in the east to Old Town Chinatown neighborhood in the west.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Structure and lift operation

3 Diagrams

4 Gallery

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

History[edit]
The bridge was completed in 1912 and replaced the Steel Bridge that was built in 1888 as a doubledeck swing-span bridge. The 1888 structure was the first railroad bridge across the Willamette River
in Portland. Its name originated because steel, instead ofwrought iron, was used in its construction,
very unusual for the time.[2] When the current Steel Bridge opened, it was simply given its
predecessor's name.
The bridge was designed by the engineering firm of Waddell & Harrington,[3] which was based
in Kansas City, Missouri, but also had an office in Portland.[4]:7, 52 The structure was built by Union
Pacific Railroad and the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company (OWR&N)[4][5] at a
cost of $1.7 million[6] (equivalent to $42 million in 2015[7]). It opened in July 1912 to rail traffic and on
August 9, 1912, to automobiles.
The 1888 Steel Bridge (upper deck) had been crossed by horse-drawn streetcars from the time of its
opening and then by the city's first electric streetcar line starting in November 1889;[4]:2325 when the
present Steel Bridge opened in 1912, the streetcar lines (all electric by then) moved to it, starting on
September 8, 1912.[8][4]:7 Streetcar service across the Steel continued until August 1, 1948, when the

last car lines using it, the Alberta and Broadway Lines, were abandoned. A single line of Portland's
once-extensive trolley bus system also used the bridge; the Williams Avenue line crossed the Steel
Bridge from February 1937 until October 9, 1949.[4]:31 Many years later, in 1986, electric transit
vehicles returned to the bridge in the form of MAX Light Rail and later the Portland Vintage Trolley.[4][9]
In 1950, the Steel Bridge became an important part of a new U.S. 99W highway between Harbor
Drive and Interstate Avenue. Harbor Drive was removed in 1974 and replaced with Tom McCall
Waterfront Park.

A MAX light rail train crossing the bridge in 2009. TriMet now has four MAX lines, and all of them cross the
Steel Bridge. More than 600 MAX trips cross the bridge each weekday.[4]

In the mid-1980s, the bridge underwent a $10 million rehabilitation, including construction of the
MAX light rail line of TriMet. The span was closed to all traffic for two years, starting in June 1984.
[10]

It reopened on May 31, 1986.[11] Completion and testing of the light-rail tracks andoverhead

wires across the bridge took place during the months that followed, and the light rail line opened for
service on September 5, 1986.[4]:3739
A single-lane viaduct that connected the bridge's east approach to another viaduct (still in existence)
that takes traffic from southbound Interstate 5 to Interstate 84 was closed in 1988 and removed in
1989, as part of roadway changes intended to improve traffic flow around the Oregon Convention
Center.[12] The center was under construction at that time and opened in 1990.
The lower deck of the bridge was threatened by major floods in 1948, 1964, and 1996.
In 2001, a 220-foot (67 m) long and 8-foot (2.4 m) wide cantilevered walkway was installed on the
southern side of the bridge's lower deck as part of the Eastbank Esplanade construction, raising to
three the number of publicly accessible walkways across the bridge, including the two narrow
sidewalks on the upper deck. The bridge is owned by Union Pacific with the upper deck leased
to Oregon Department of Transportation, and subleased to TriMet, while the City of Portland is
responsible for the approaches.[13]

An Amtrak Cascades train crossing the bridge

The average daily traffic in 2000 was 23,100 vehicles (including many TriMet buses), 200 MAX
trains, 40 freight and Amtrak trains, and 500 bicycles. The construction of the lower-deck walkway
connected to the Eastbank Esplanade resulted in a sharp increase in bicycle traffic, with over 2,100
daily bicycle crossings in 2005.[14] MAX traffic across the Steel has tripled since 2000, when only the
GreshamHillsboro line (now the "Blue Line") was using the bridge, to 605 daily crossings
(weekdays) as of 2012.[4]:38 This resulted from the addition of three more MAX lines during that
period: the Red, Yellow, Green Lines.
In summer 2008, the upper deck was closed for three weeks to allow a junction to be built at the
west end for the MAX Green Line. A change made at that time is that the two inner lanes became
restricted to MAX trains only, with cars, buses and other motorized traffic permitted only in the two
outer lanes.[15]
In 2012, the Steel Bridge celebrated its 100th birthday. According to The Oregonian, it is the hardest
working bridge on the Willamette River: "Cars, trucks, freight trains, buses, Amtrak, MAX,
pedestrians, bicycles -- you carry it all."[16]

Steel Bridge panorama: at right is the Moda Center. Also visible in the background are
the Fremont and Broadway bridges.

Structure and lift operation[edit]

View from roadway during a lift-span opening

The lift span of the bridge is 211 feet (64 m) long. At low river levels the lower deck is 26 feet (7.9 m)
above the water, and 163 feet (50 m) of vertical clearance is provided when both decks are raised.
Because of the independent lifts, the lower deck can be raised to 72 feet (22 m), telescoping into the
upper deck but not disturbing it. Each deck has it own counterweights, two for the upper and eight
for the lower, totaling 9,000,000 lb (4,100 metric tons).
The machinery house sits atop the upper-deck lift truss. The operator's room is suspended from the
top of the lift-span truss, directly below the machinery house, so that the operator can view river
traffic as well as the upper deck. After the 2001 addition of a pedestrian walkway on the lower deck,
cameras and closed-circuit television monitors were added to allow the operator to view the lowerdeck walkway.[4]:17
Until the bridge's mid-1980s renovation, the crossing gates blocking the roadway and sidewalks
during raising of the upper-deck lift span were manually operated, rotated horizontally across the
roadway by two "gate tenders", one on each side of the lift span.[4]:8 Small shacks for the gatekeepers
were positioned on the roadway deck, between the inner and outer traffic lanes, but they were
removed during the 1980s rebuilding[4]:21 and replaced by a new gate tender house positioned above
the roadway, in the west lift tower.[4]:8 Powered crossing gates replaced the manual ones, and
operation of the gates is now automated, controlled by the bridge operator.[4]:21

Вам также может понравиться