No surprise to me, City staff confirmed to Council this week that the Chief William Commanda Bridge will be closed again this winter. My disappointment is likely different from your disappointment, though, and I want to take a moment to retrace the steps that got us to this point.
The bridge was not designed to be maintained through four seasons. The main project is a bridge rehabilitation – a large infrastructure project to repair the piers of a City-owned railway bridge. As part of that, Mayor Watson and Minister McKenna were successful at adding to the City funding for the repair work with relatively modest federal funding to deck over the bridge with wood and throw up some fencing to make it a pedestrian/cycling connection through three seasons, and the Mayor and I were very clear at the time that our expectation was that it would be groomed as part of the Kichi Sibi Winter Trail during the snowy months. There was never an expectation that it would be a maintained cycling/pedestrian connection, and the paths to which it connects are not maintained by the NCC. It was the right choice, however, to accept the cash and put the bridge into use for active transportation and recreation understanding those limitations.
They cannot use salt on the legacy steel structure and plowing it will damage the wood decking beyond what the City currently has budget to maintain. The Alexandra bridge is the only structure I can think of that’s similar. I don’t know what their repair budget is, but given the whole thing is to be dismantled I suspect the math is a little different on damage. We also had the temporary pedestrian bridge at Kichi Sibi station while that’s under construction, but it was only there for a couple of years. Again, maintenance of the wood decking was less of a concern. They salted the heck out of that one, if I recall my own trips across. Complicating matters is that any treatment applied to the bridge deck is going to wind up in the Kichi Sibi River below in the immediate vicinity of our major source of drinking water.
I have two disappointments. The first is that grooming it for skiing is proving more difficult to accomplish against bureaucratic inertia, and the commitment the Mayor and I made that it would be part of the KSW trail is proving difficult to achieve. The bridge isn’t holding snow, but last year was extremely mild and total snowfall a fraction of the usual amount. There simply wasn’t enough snow that didn’t blow away or melt through to try to groom it. They’re going to try again this year to get a pilot underway and I have reiterated my request several times that we find a way to add snow fencing or some other measure to try to keep what falls from the sky on the deck.
My second disappointment is that they won’t just leave the bridge open and let people to use it at their own risk. But I have to recognize that the bridge has a fraught history, and the lawyers will not allow it to be open if it’s icy. In my household we’ve had our own experience of how fast the bridge becomes hazardous, and I have to acknowledge that it’s wishful thinking on my part to imagine use of the pathway allowed with some “use at own risk” signs.
I still hope that we’ll find a way to get this groomed, with a little help from a good snowy winter if we have one and with whatever measures the City can reasonably put in place to allow snow to accumulate. I have no expectation they’ll simply allow people to use it at their own risk – signage won’t negate the City’s liability. I am hopeful they mean what they say that a new gate design will allow more nimble opening and closings that aren’t necessarily driven by the calendar, but by actual conditions.
My two disappointments are more than academic. I think I’ve said it before, but Natalie has become a three-season cyclist replacing a lot of driving for two big reasons. Her e-assist bike has smoothed out the most off-putting aspects of cycling, and the Commanda bridge means she virtually never has to share the road with cars between our home in Hintonburg and her workplace at the foot of the Alexandra. We love that bridge, and I feel keenly its closing. The bridge will be closed this year, but I won’t give up efforts to ensure that its season can eventually be extended.