Bridge Hate 1: Champlain Bridge

While I hate many bridges and other inanimate objects, there are those people, you know who I mean, who love bridges and waste their lives trying to convert us to join their cult.  It is only a bridge.  It cannot love you back or hold your hair back over the toilet seat when you have had too many shots playing can I out drink Richard Burton?

The new Champlain Bridge opened in November 2011 replacing its rusted predecessor, which had been there since 1929.  It is a beautiful blue structure with fluid arches at its crest looming over the narrow passage between the ruins of Crown Point in New York and Chimney Point in Vermont.  Completed in two years by a German engineering firm, it cost was estimated at $76 million.

 

When the states demolished the old bridge with explosives in late 2009 hundreds of Vermonters living and working in Western Addison County lamented the long commutes and disruption to local businesses because they had to take a ferry across the two thousand feet passage.  The New Yorkers did not care and moved on like rational people.  The hundreds, needing more attention than a single actress or any of Judd Apatow's children twitter, convinced the local television stations in Burlington, Plattsburgh and Albany to do emotion driven stories about the hardships that the people of Chimney Point had to endure bridgeless.  Remember, its just a bridge.  The hundreds got their golden bridge and swindled millions from NYSDOT and the Vermont Agency for Transportation that should have been spent paving roads that more than fifty people use in a day.

 



"It's a critical link for west-central Vermont and New York State, and vital to Vermont's economic strength, as well as for the people who rely upon that bridge for work and recreation," said Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin.

In the press release, linked below, Governor Shumlin is not the only elected official cashing in on the bridge and making it the greatest human achievement of all time.  Remember, its just a bridge.
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/110711OpeningofLakeChamplainBridge

As the politicians take credit and inflate the critical existential importance of this bridge to the few hundred voting people and their taxable revenue, they should remember like any wide receiver celebrating catching the ball that it is their fucking job to fix the bridge and do not deserve the adoration for following protocol. 



The two minutes hate for the Champlain Bridge is not because of the object itself but rather because the bridge lovers were so indignant about their bridge from nowhere to nowhere and how obviously important they are all hundred of them in the cosmic scheme. Remember, its just a bridge.

If you would like to join the cult of the Champlain Bridge please use the link below:
http://champlainbridgecommunity.org/index.html

Can you hate a bridge?

Yes.  I believe that you can hate bridges and all other inanimate objects including carbon rods, ears of corn, and fabric swatches.  The bridges that I hate are drawbridges, especially those over unimportant and small waterways that impede traffic for recreational or private purposes.  When drawbridges are raised they begin as quaint next annoying then boring back to annoying and the wait becomes infuriating as you watch the obese bridge operator smoking and texting his girlfriend while the uhf/vhf wails for his attention.  You think that anyone can do his job, press button make bridge go up and press button make bridge go down. Waits can turn into eternities as the backup cascades miles behind the bridge itself as a Hinckley daysailor 42 putters up or downriver.  This is magnified on interstates such as I-280 over the Passaic River in Newark and formerly over the Hutchinson River on I-95 in the Bronx.

The bridge that I hate is the Stanley H. Stroffolino Bridge also known as the Washington Street Bridge in South Norwalk, Connecticut.  The Norwalk River sees mostly recreational boat traffic and some commercial vessels such as barges and small tankers.  It is not a busy place.  The Stroffolino is a state operated maritime drawbridge that crosses the Norwalk River carrying the circuitous State Highway 136.  It opened on 2 February 1974 after being legislated to replace the old drawbridge in 1949 by the aforementioned State Senator Stanley Stroffolino from Norwalk, who served on the Roads and Bridges Committee.  The old bridge was damaged severely in the 1955 Floods.

The previous bridges were operated by the City and predate the creation of the state highway.   The Stroffolino Bridge is the second automobile drawbridge over the Norwalk; the first bridge was located closer to the railroad crossing and the row of Italianate roofed stores.  The first road bridge was finished in 1912 by the city.  Norwalk purchased plots of the Aisthorpe and Betts lands on the east side marsh and abutting the railroad bridge from the Bank following foreclosure in 1911. See Norwalk v. Kate Podmore (1913)

Hatred is not a logical expression it is emotional and rarely wins an argument.  Despite these set of facts, the Stroffolino drawbridge is unnecessary and should be replaced with a permanent structure or removed entirely.  For aesthetic reasons South Norwalk would probably fight a new bridge especially if the span is higher or incongruous with Washington Street and the urban renewal, but it would save the state on maintenance and rid it of another bridge operator.  Norwalk does not need a drawbridge.  No one needs another drawbridge.