A newly opened pedestrian bridge in the Salt Lake Valley will enable cyclists to cross between two bike trails that had been separated by a six-lane Interstate 215 in Utah.
The 280-foot steel-truss bike and hike bridge was opened Friday. Costing $3.5 million, it connects the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in the east to the Jordan River Trail to the west over Parley's Trail.
Known as Parley's Crossing, it was originally envisioned as a tunnel under the freeway. Jim Deschenes, project operations manager, said he realized that using the hillsides to create a double-span across the freeway was a better solution than the tunnel, which would have required frequent lane closures on the freeway.
The 10-foot-wide bridge deck is made of concrete and connects to a 10-12-foot wide trail on each side. It was installed in two phases, one in May and the second in July. The official opening was Friday.
The bridge is the centerpiece of Parley's Trail, an 8-mile east-west connector trail through Salt Lake City.
The Jordan River Parkway Trail in the west runs along the river in Salt Lake and Utah counties. The master plan calls for some 50 miles of trails in the corridor.
The Bonneville Shoreline Trail in the east is a 90-mile long pedestrian and bicycle path being built by volunteers in the foothills of the Wasatch Range. It gives bikes access to trails and other recreational areas in the region.
See the story at the Salt Lake Tribune.
And while its a critical piece of the bicycling network in that part of Utah, it's got nothing on the Murray Lock and Dam Bicycle Pedestrian Bridge, aka The Big Dam Bridge, over the Little Rock River in Arkansas. That one is more than 3,000 feet long.
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