Street crossing keeps bicyclists, pedestrians moving along Greenway
by Tesha M. Christensen
When the $5.1 million Sabo Bridge was closed on Feb. 19, 2012, it affected people traveling three ways. Lightrail trains were prohibited from crossing under the bridge until Friday, and passengers were shuttled through that area via bus. Vehicles were rerouted from Hiawatha Ave. onto Cedar for a week. And bicyclists and pedestrians were no longer able to take the bridge and keep out of traffic; instead, they all had to cross at the street level.
Until Minnesota’s only cable suspension bridge is reopened, those bicyclists and pedestrians will continue to dodge vehicles at the 28th St. and Hiawatha Ave. stoplights.
At this point, no one knows when the Sabo Bridge will be reopening. It is, however, stabilized now, pointed out Minneapolis Public Works deputy director Heidi Hamilton.
“Before we design a fix, we want to know what went wrong,” stated Hamilton.
Until that happens, the cost of repairing the bridge is also unknown.
The city is not releasing any opinions on what may have caused the cracks because no one knows what went wrong and won’t until all the facts come in, said Hamilton. “There’s not a lot of value in speculating,” she added.
The bridge had most recently been examined in October. City inspectors gave the cable anchors the highest rating for soundness.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BRIDGE?
At 10:06 p.m. Feb. 19, a citizen reported finding a pair of cables lying on the Sabo Bridge deck. City workers responded, and discovered that a partly rusted diaphragm plate had fallen 100 feet from the mast, and released the topmost cable, number nine. A bridge inspector arrived at 2 a.m. to examine the mast, and discovered a second crack in diaphragm plate eight. Crews detoured vehicle traffic away from the site. The problematic effort to shore up the eastern end of the bridge began. These supports will remain in place until the bridge is fixed. One lane of northbound Hiawatha is closed to accommodate these supports.
The main focus the first week was making sure the bridge was stabilized and opening Hiawatha Ave. back up to traffic. Now the focus has shifted to discovering what went wrong.
Minneapolis and Hennepin County have awarded Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. of Illinois a $100,000 no-bid contract to investigate the cause of anchor plate fractures; the two entities will split the bill. A determination could take four to eight weeks. Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates also received a $2 million, no-bid contract to investigate the cause of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in 2007.
Representatives of Wiss, Janney and Elstner were on the scene by Wednesday, Feb. 22; they shipped the fallen plate to to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania for forensic analysis.
According to Hamilton, the next day, workers removed tension from diaphragm plate eight, which was also cracked. The number eight cable was detached by engineers on Friday.
Wiss, Janney and Elstner began magnetic particle testing to examine the rest of the bridge’s 18 steel anchors for cracks. A minor defect was discovered and fixed on plate seven, and cracking found on plate five. A temporary redundancy fix was completed the second week of February.
At the same time, the broken edge of plate number nine was removed. “There is a lot of interest in looking at that,” Hamilton pointed out. This piece will also be shipped to Lehigh University for analysis, and will be used to determine why the plate failed.
Some residents have speculated that too much weight on the bridge the day before may have contributed to the plates breaking. Gabriel Hoffman, the Seward representative on the Midtown Greenway Coalition Board, noted, “The situation people seem to be concerned about was the Friday night before the cables snapped, when there was (apparently) a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck up on the bridge. Now, it is designed to carry that load, so my understanding is that if there wasn’t some underlying problem with the cable supports, it shouldn’t have been a problem. If there is a problem with the supports, that load may have been the proverbial straw for the camel, but not being an engineer, I would not care to offer an opinion on the matter.”
“The bridge was designed to carry service vehicles,” Hamilton pointed out. The bridge needs to be plowed, and emergency vehicles are able to respond to calls on the bridge.
The city did a good job with the bridge closure, according to Eric Hart, a Cooper resident who doesn’t own a car, but instead bikes wherever he needs to go. “I heard about it fairly quickly and the city was very transparent about what went wrong and what they needed to do to make it safe for the LRT to run and the car traffic to be able to go under it.”
IS THE CROSSING AT 28TH AVE. SAFE?
Until the bridge is back in service, bicyclists and pedestrians will continue to cross at the street level.
As the weather warms up and more pleasure bikers join the commuters, Midtown Greenway Coalition Executive Director and Longfellow resident Soren Jensen anticipates that there will be crowding at the 28th St. lights. Already during these warm spring days there have been long lines of bicyclists waiting to cross. “It could be even more dangerous as bikers at the end struggle to get across,” said Jensen.
“As we get into the summer, and the cyclists on the Midtown Greenway includes more recreational cyclists (as opposed to people doing serious training or commuters), it will be more of an inconvenience, since they tend to feel less comfortable crossing at Hiawatha,” observed Hoffman, who travels on the Greenway every day.
There are several issues with the crossing at 28th and Hiawatha, according to local bikers.
“Drivers tend to be more aggressive on highways and not respect pedestrian right-of-way at crosswalks. They’ll inch forward into the crosswalk,” observed Longfellow resident Mike Jones, who bikes between three to 30 miles each day.
Hart noted, “The lane merging onto Hiawatha on the east side (coming from Lake Street) is probably the most dangerous part of intersection since it is unclear if the cars will stop and they are coming fast most of the time,” Hart said. “The right turn lane off of 28th to southbound Hiawatha is also problematic since cars don’t always look for pedestrians or bicycles before they turn right.”
Five years ago before the Sabo Bridge was constructed everyone used the street, but since then bicycle use has greatly increased in the Minneapolis, Jensen noted. Over 4,000 people use the Greenway each day. Minneapolis is currently second highest in the nation in the number of people commuting to work via bicycle, at 4% of the population; Portland has 6%. And as gas prices increase, Jensen believes more people will ditch their cars for bikes.
Most riders view the Sabo bridge as a safer and faster way to get across Hiawatha, according to Jensen.
“The more we can get people out of traffic, the more they want to bike,” Jensen observed. “People won’t bike unless it is safe.”
He added, “The bridge is part of a network that makes people feel safe. It’s a good investment.” Jensen pointed out that creating bike lanes, fashioning curb bump-outs and creating trails like the Greenway is much cheaper than building roads.
“The Greenway makes getting across south Minneapolis a breeze, and I think the fact that its free of cars and intersections, have encouraged a whole new group of bicyclists to try commuting and getting around by bicycle for the first time and get ‘hooked,’” observed Hart. “I’ve been biking in the city for 20 years and it is much more pleasant to go across south Minneapolis on the Greenway than on 31st or 32nd Streets.”
The city’s traffic division is monitoring the situation at 28th and Hiawatha, according to Hamilton. Changes have been made to the signal timing, but there are no plans to make other changes at the intersection. “Our hope is that this is not a long-term thing. We don’t want to put money into something that is for a short duration,” Hamilton explained.
“We are interested in getting the bridge back in use as soon as possible,” Hamilton said. “We recognize it is a really important crossing for bikers.”
Will people trust bridge when it reopens?
by Tesha M. Christensen
Will people trust the Sabo Bridge when it is reopened?
Longfellow resident Kevin Baumgartner isn’t sure they will. “Its safety record, and the confidence and comfort that goes with it, has been shattered. People may possibly never again have as high of a confidence level with that bridge, and that, in itself, is unfortunate and concerning,” Baumgartner stated.
People he knows in other states have a lowered respect for Minnesota due to the collapse of the 35W bridge in 2007 and the issue associated with the Sabo Bridge now.
“The question I get most is ‘What is wrong with you guys and your bridges?!’” Baumgartner remarked.
He added, “Also, within in 24 hours of the Sabo bridge closure, the Washington Avenue bridge had Central Corridor construction debris (the size of large bricks) fall onto West River Parkway below it. So, three bridges, all within approximantly one mile radius of each other, have had safety problems that causes the closures of roads. So, a poor public perception of bridges in the state/city by locals and others is natural.”
On the other hand, Longfellow resident Katherine Debertin isn’t any more concerned about crossing bridges now than she was before. “I kind of think of bridges the same way I do about flying - I learned to breathe through crossings and I learned to breathe through take-offs and landings whenever I’m flying,” Debertin stated.
Just as there are investigations into airplane crashes, they are into bridge issues. “I hope that it translates into better inspection or construction or design or to prevent future incidents,” remarked Debertin.
Howe resident Eli Effinger-Weintraub also hopes that the failure in the Sabo bridge is another wake-up call to examine infrastructure inspection and maintenance procedures and schedules.
Eric Hart, Longfellow’s former representative on the Midtown Greenway Coalition Board, doesn’t see a connection between the I35 bridge collapse and the closure of the Sabo Bridge. “This bridge was in no danger of falling down and nobody was hurt,” he pointed out.
Hart added, “I think the Sabo bridge is unique enough that it won’t effect people’s confidences in other bridges. There are dozens of standard concrete bridges in the city and there haven’t been dramatic problems with them. The Sabo bridge is unique and the first in the state, so, if anything, people will be critical that they tried to experiment with something that was never tried in Minnesota, etc. (or shouldn’t have spent so much to make it look flashy).”
Avid bicyclist and Longfellow resident Mike Jones agrees with Hart that the Sabo Bridge damage is different than what occurred with the 35W bridge because it wasn’t a catastrophic failure. He does however see how people would make the comparison “since the same contractor was hired for both bridges.” The Illinois-based engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. investigated the collapse of the 35W bridge and has been hired to determine what went wrong with the Sabo Bridge.
“As people are already using the bridge by going around the barricades, I think people will still use the bridge,” Jones said. “I do think that some people will realize crossing at the light at 28th and Hiawatha is fairly quick and a way to bypass the large grade change in the bridge and will thus not use the bridge.”
DeWayne Townsend, co-chair of the Longfellow Community Council Environment and Transportation Committee has not changed his opinion on the safety of bridges in the area. “Two bridges among the thousands does not indicate a trend,” Townsend said. “I still trust bridges.”
ABOUT THE BRIDGE
The Sabo Bridge was designed by engineering consulting-firm URS. It opened in November 2007, two months after the 35W bridge over the Mississippi collapsed. The bridge has a total length of 2,200 feet with the main span over Hiawatha at 220 feet. While Hennepin County oversaw construction of the bridge, it transferred ownership to the city of Minneapolis in 2008.
This story printed in the April edition of the Longfellow/Nokomis Messenger.
