Why Is The Speed Limit on the Morrison Bridge So Low? And Why Don't Buses Use It? Who's to Blame?

It’ll all be over before you know it, assuming you’re (a) in a coma, or (b) a glacier.

By Marty Smith

What's the story with the Morrison Bridge? Why the low speed limit and absence of buses and big rigs using it? Anything we should know? If so, who's to blame? —Seems Safe Enough

One of the great things about all this legal marijuana is that nobody remembers last year's news, so I can keep reporting the same old facts over and over again. (It's a little-known fact this column has been on a six-month continuous loop since 2013, when I was killed in a tragic French horn accident.)

Seriously, Safe, if you'd spent less time playing FarmVille and more time keeping up with current events, you'd know this story. Still, with the final phase of the project about to begin, a recap couldn't hurt.

Up until 2011, the Morrison Bridge's lift span deck (the part that goes up and down) was made of stupid old outdated steel grating, which just sat there, boringly doing its job and not breaking, for 50 years. How hopelessly antiquated, how drearily 20th century!

So we decided to replace the steel with a new, exciting Space Age material called fiber-reinforced polymer, which was lightweight and high-traction and Instagram-ready.

(In fairness, the steel grating had been blamed for a number of accidents, especially when Coors-addled yahoos insisted on pulling illegal lane changes on it. You know they didn't signal, either.)

The new, Bluetooth-compliant deck was opened to traffic in March 2012, whereupon it promptly began disintegrating like a soggy paper towel.

Panicked county officials instituted those speed and load restrictions to try to keep the thing in one piece for a few years while they came up with Plan B.

Related: Picture of Isaac Brock's Totaled Car After His Accident on the Morrison Bridge

That plan, which involves a more traditional concrete-filled deck, will begin construction in the next few months. (The county whiled away the intervening hours by suing—successfully—the contractor who put in the whole furshlugginer mess.)

It'll all be over before you know it, assuming you're (a) in a coma, or (b) a glacier. (The project wraps in October 2017.)

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com

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