Movable Bridges - Brickell Avenue Bridge

The Intercoastal Waterway (a 3000 mile channel along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts) is a good place to find movable bridges. Its safer than traveling on the open ocean and so ships travel on it and movable bridges are needed for people wanting to get to the beach. These bridges seem to open and close more often than the other movable bridges we've been studying.

The Brickell Avenue Bridge actually crosses over the Miami River just before it empties into the Intercoastal Waterway in Miami Beach, Florida. The bridge is decorated with sculptures, sconces, and a pretty tender house. It's a bascule bridge built in 1995 that replaced a 64 year old structure. It was recently widened to three lanes in each direction but it still gets backed up with traffic during rush hour. The bridge has a higher vertical clearance and the river was dredged so it doesn't have to open quite so often.

Movable Bridges - Brickell Avenue Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Movable Bridges - Biloxi Bay Railroad Bridge

Continuing our travels westward, we come to the Biloxi Bay Railroad Bridge. New ties and rails were just placed on the deck when I took this photo and they are waiting for the ballast to be poured. This bridge must have been less damaged than most of bridges along the coast of Mississippi, if they just needed to replace the rail that got knocked off by Hurricane Katrina.

The swing span can be seen in the distance. It provides a clear span of 132 ft for ships to enter and leave Biloxi Back Bay. The bridge was built in 1978, perhaps replacing an earlier bridge. I've seen photos of a wooden trestle bridge with a steam locomotive crossing Biloxi Bay from 1901.

The Sunset Limited ran from Los Angeles to Orlando Florida until Hurricane Katrina took it out of service and it has never been fully restored.

Movable Bridges - Biloxi Bay Railroad Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Movable Bridges - Popps Ferry Bridge

As we continued east along Mississippi's coastline into Biloxi's Back Bay we came to the Popps Ferry Bridge.

It seems like bridges along the Gulf Coast are in a constant state of disrepair. In this photo the bridge is being put back together after Hurricane Katrina came through (in August 2005). I was reviewing my trip on Google Earth and found a photo of the bridge being repaired again after being hit by a tugboat pulling eight barges in 2009. The bridge tender opened the double-leaf bascule spans for the tugboat, but the operator must have had trouble with the current because he knocked out a bridge span instead. If it's not hurricanes, or errant vessels, its oil spills for the ill-fated residents of Biloxi's Back Bay.

The Popps Ferry Bridge has long and short precast I girder approaches and a 180 ft wide channel opening. The bridge was originally built in 1979 but its been rebuilt several times.

I'm afraid we are going to see a lot more damaged movable bridges before we get out of the Gulf. We estimated there was over $2 billion in bridge damage from Hurricane Katrina and many of these bridges have movable spans.

Movable Bridges - Popps Ferry Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.