This bridge on Cox Creek has looked like this for years.
Albany and Millersburg like to show off their Talking Water Gardens. But to get there, visitors first have to pass over this sad-looking bridge. While the water gardens have won awards as an ingenious system for treating and cooling wastewater, the gateway to it seems to reflect a regrettable degree of infrastructure neglect.
The bridge takes the northern end of Waverly Drive across Cox Creek. About 10 or 15 years ago — it’s frightening how fast memory fades and I no longer have access to the original stories — the Linn County Road Department became concerned that the structure might fail under under the heavy trucks then using it. After a brief and temporary closure, the structure was reopened with one lane.
Later, the county off-loaded responsibility for the road and the bridge to the city of Millersburg. But the one-lane restriction has continued.
This little bridge, I was surprised to learn, is listed on something called the National Bridge Inventory, which says it was built in 1957. The inventory also says the bridge in 2010 carried an average daily traffic of 154 vehicles, not exactly a steady stream of traffic. Its deck and superstructure were listed as being in satisfactory condition. But as for its structural evaluation, the assessment was “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action.”
Big trucks no longer go this way since the truck yard north of the creek was replaced by the engineered wetlands. So I’m thinking it should not be too costly or complicated to clean up this entrance to the Water Gardens, restore two lanes and get rid of the unsightly jersey barriers. That’s a project the joint Albany-Millersburg water management committee might want to take up and put on the list of things to get done. (hh)
The railroad still drives some pretty heavy vehicles over that bridge.
What a cool little bridge. You don’t get to see wooden handrails on bridges very often anymore. It could use some paint and restoration.
Sometime back before the TW Gardens came to be, I remember there were half-a-dozen or so prestressed concrete beams stacked in the gravel lot northwest of the bridge. They looked used, probably sourced from a temporary span on I-5 back when most of the bridges between Albany and Salem were rebuilt. I thought they were there with the intention of repairing this bridge. Hasso, maybe the Link County Road Dept. can speak to where they went. Perhaps they were diverted to a higher priority bridge repair elsewhere. Alas, opportunity missed.
The Linn roadmaster told me at the time, years ago now, that he had offered those beams to Albany for use on the Cox Creek bridge, but there was no interest. Eventually the county took them away for use on another project elsewhere. (hh)
I’ll bet if our council could stretch the CARA district over east to that area that bridge would be a promanade in no time! Looks like the council has blinders on that hampers their view from no where but the bucolic downtown. Seems there was an oportunity lost there regarding those beams! JE