Will wonders never cease?
The Circle Avenue bridge on the Springwater Trail has been out of service for over a year, so you can understand my astonishment when I came around the curve at 156th Ave and saw this big new sign on the barracade. Amazingly, it looks like the City of Portland has finally decided that it might be a good plan to actually fix the bridge instead of engaging in a running battle with the trail users who have gotten fed up with the lack of repairs and were just using (and removing the barracades as part of “just using”) the bridge instead of looping around to the north on Circle Ave.
It will be nice when the bridge is replaced and I can check off that last 300 or so meters of the Portland Traction line that I’ve not ridden yet.
One of the really bizarre things about this bridge being out is that traffic was routed north along Circle Ave, which puts you onto Jenne Road north of the trail (which means you need to zig across Jenne Road to regain the trail instead of just crossing. Fortunately most of the automobile traffic is familiar with this ongoing train wreck and treats bicycles coming out of Jenne Road as if they were on the path already) instead of south across a decommissioned but still open bridge, then cross 10 meters of field back to the trail. It would have made it far more pleasant for pedestrians and bicyclists who don’t wish to play with traffic any more than they had to. Maybe there’s a colony of drop bears down there.