Another crumbling city bridge shut as unsafe

So much nicer than Seaport Ave, where there is no enforcement for motorists and it is so exposed.

It was nice to have an alternative to the speeding homicidal drivers trying to funnel into the highway on the Seaport bridge who are adding exactly nothing to the area... It was like a little park where you could slow down and breathe, full of history and fascinating engineering. A little rust is good for a city IMHO.

I hope they fix it up to the level of it being a bike/ped bridge, we need that in the area. The squidport bridge is nearby but the cars and trucks coming off the highway onto it and the ones entering the ramp to get to the highway make it a very unpleasant experience. With all the money being spent on bridges for cars and trucks, one pedestrian bridge to the waterfront would be very welcome.

Yeah, it was closed this morning when I went to cross it as part of my commute. It was a nice way for pedestrians to avoid the horribly timed light at Seaport and Atlantic. Gives a walk signal only if you ask for it every two minutes, which is not a good crossing for pedestrians. Add to that the incompetent police officers at the evening rush hour who never take pedestrians into consideration and the drivers desperately trying to speed through the light to get onto the highway, and it gets even worse.

It was annoying when the construction shut the underpass on the other side of the channel, but now since the Northern Ave bridge is shut that underpass doesn't matter at all now.

Seeing as there are constantly vehicles parked on it in addition to a permanent construction trailer, you cannot tell me that the bridge is unsafe for pedestrians and bikes. The city is only doing this because of the Tsarnaev trial scheduled to begin at the Moakley courthouse in a few weeks. Typical reduction of the public good in the name of bogus "security." Boston should be ashamed of itself for this move.

I've used this bridge for years. Except for ocassionally replacing a plank the bridge appears sound. I would like to know what is the evidence indicating that the bridge is dangerous?

The bridge is handsome. As someone else mentioned it reminds us of the power of 19th century United States when the nation was powerful and muscular, steel was produced here and when we built public structures with both great style and to last for more than a few decades.

Part of the beauty of this bridge is that its structure is not hidden. Anyone can see how it supports itself. Most architecture is skinned in glass and concrete and tries to hide the architecture. This bridge is a proud statement of what is required for a structure to do its job. We can see the skeleton of the bridge; we can see how weight is carried and transferred. It is a lesson in boththe beauty of bold muscular architecture but also a lesson in to any passersby in how a structure is built.

A bridge such as the Moakley bridge is an attempt to hide the fact that it is a bridge. Instead of focusing attention on the fact that the bridge connects two points of land separated by water, it instead distracts attention away from its purpose, pretending to be just a road that bypasses an area that should be ignored.

Is the North Avenue bridge not safe? Or is this a backhanded way to "prove" why the bridge should come down. There is a constituency that would logically support tearing this bridge down. The people who dock their boats between the North Avenue and Moakley bridges. Having to wait for the North Avenue bridge to turn must be a terrible inconvenience for them.

If the North Avenue bridge is opened come Spring and left in the open position then that is strongly points to the people who dock near the Barking Crab as using their money and political influence to destroy what is a part of Boston's architectural history.

It's ironice that there was recent discussion of opening part of the Northern Avenue bridge to vehicular traffic. Apparently that is not valued highly at this point.

If this bridge is destroyed it will be another example of the lie that Boston values its history. Way too many of Boston's finest 19th century architecture of many styles have been torn down and replaced with giant glass boxes of dull form and boring presence.

Maybe they can convert it into some luxury micro apartments.