bridge

Rochester's Broad Street

~ randyaa ~ 7 Comments

The plans to rip up Broad Street and reconstruct the original Canal Aqueduct over the river are progressing.  I’ve mentioned the plans before and I’ve always thought it was kind of a neat idea but never thought it would get anywhere.  Now that it seems to be getting some traction it deserves more thought.

I for one think it’s completely ridiculous, and the City has more important things to do with its money.

The following is a letter I sent to:

  • Louise Slaughter
  • Paul.Holahan@cityofrochester.gov
  • info@broadstreetcorridor.com
  • Hackt@cityofrochester.gov
  • info@cityofrochester.gov (The closest I could find to Mayor Bob Duffy)
  • Patricia.malgieri@cityofrochester.gov
  • darryl.porter@cityofrochester.gov

Regardless of how you stand on the issue, I suggest you do the same.

Broad St Closure – A Concerned Citizen

The closing of the broad street bridge this week has me frustrated.  It’s something I cross on the bus at least once a day and has increased my bus commute time by about 5-10 minutes in each direction. In the morning due to the detour, and in the afternoon due to the additional build up of traffic on Exchange st.  Even in the past two days, the inconvenience this has created has been significant.  This has also been during a week of school closures and lighter than usual traffic.  I’m concerned how the effects would be during events at the Convention Center and War Memorial.

Why is the bridge closed anyway? Are we really going to tear out the bridge and flood the original aqueduct to create a POND over the RIVER?  Or are we just going to blow millions of dollars planning it and studying the effects of possibly doing it and then do nothing?

Rochester citizens have watched many other big projects fail and cost them millions of dollars with no gain.  Sure we got a new port building from the Fast Ferry debacle, but now it sits mostly unused and unoccupied.  One of the few ideas (The Casino) which stood to bring in direct revenue for the city was even voted down.  Now we plan on sinking millions into a plan to create another Manhatten square Park or another Genesee Crossroads with a manmade water feature in the middle instead of a river.

Rochester has proven time and time again that it can’t deliver on ideas like this.  Therefor we need to spend the money on things like better public transportation systems, Better education, maintaining (or improving) the parks we do have.

We don’t need another money pit, we need something with some real return on investment.

Stop wasting our money and end the study of the Broad St bridge closure early.

A Concerned Citizen,
Randy Aldrich

The M/V Cahaba Tugboat Incident

~ randyaa ~ 8 Comments

Randomly found this story on Snopes from 1979 about a boat that completely flipped over underwater and righted itself.  It seems unbelievable and insane but it’s  actually true which is incredible.  The most amazing part is the boat continued to be used and the crew survived.  Awesome.

towboat06April 28, 1979, Alabama. The 80-foot 1,800hp towboat Motor Vessel Cahaba was dropping two barges full of coal down the Tombigee River in Western Alabama, having just refueled 14 miles upstream at Demopolis, Alabama. It was owned and operated by the Warrior and Gulf Navigation of Mobile, a subsidiary of Pittsburg Steel, and was on its return trip to the McDuffie Coal Terminal at the mouth of the Mobile River to export its cargo.

At its helm stood Jimmy Wilkerson, and on board were his pilot, Earl Barhart, as well as two deckhands.

As he approached the Rooster Bridge, a drawbridge along the Dixie Overland Highway and Route 80, he prepared to uncouple the barges, as was common practice, and to let them drift through eastern span where the currents were less harsh. The towboat would then reverse upstream and pass through the western lift span, pass through, and catch up with the barges. His deckhands proceeded to remove the rigging and the winch wires, but for some reason neglected to do so on the starboard side.

To make things worse, that year’s spring had seen particularly harsh, with the river level high and the currents particularly swift. The boat, with a cable still strapping its starboard side, began to align itself with the bridge and slowly list.

Throughout the ordeal, Jimmy Wilkinson never left the helm. As he recognized that his 37-foot high towboat would be pulled into the 11-foot span of the eastern span, he yelled into his loudspeaker: “All right, y’all, this ain’t no fire drill. Get off the damn bridge!”

Though the wheelhouse filled with water and Wilkinson was left holding onto the portside door frame, the boat amazingly enough righted itself at the other side, as anxious passerbys were sure that the ship was doomed. A forward-thinking reporter called Charles Barger, working for the Linden “Democrat-Reporter”, quickly took his camera and snapped the photographs that we see today, testament to a series of remarkable coincidences that righted this sturdy towboat.

The main reasons that are attributed to the unthinkable resurfacing of the Cahaba are two-fold. Firstly, the ship had been refueled 14 miles upstream and had therefore a nearly full tank, which acted as ballast and prevented the boat from rolling over, not unlike a buoy. As an added benefit, the Warrior and Gulf Navigation Company had installed three to four feet of cement at the bottom of the ship.

With the notice of the M/V Tallapoosa, which was waiting to pass the Rooster bridge, and the M/V Cathy Parker, which was already downstream, they were able to shove the runaway barges into an empty cornfield downstream and come to the assistance of Wilkinson. While he was uninjured, a good friend of his, Captain Michael L. Smith, later described how at a meeting with Wilkinson a month or so later, “his hands were still shaking too much for the ash to build up to any degree”…

Though both the bridge and the boat suffered damage, the boat was swiftly repaired and put back into service. The bridge was demolished in 1980 and replaced. The M/V Cahaba was sold and rechristened on June 11, 1999, as the “Capt. Ed Harris” in Buffalo, West Virginia.

Text and pictures from The M/V Cahaba Tugboat Incident, April 28, 1979

Broad St Aqueduct

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

A while ago I heard about plans to revitalize Broad street in downtown Rochester by converting it back into the Canal.  This is what the aqueduct bridge was originally.  When I first heard of the plan, I thought it was neat but didn’t think it would ever work.  The biggest hurdle I can see to overcome is the traffic situation.  Broad street is a main roadway and carries a lot of traffic.

broad st canal map

I just found out that the plans didn’t die.  In fact it seems like there are many proposals and that something may actually happen, although what exactly happens to broad st is still up in the air.  It will be very interesting to see what happens.  There’s a whole website dedicated to The Broad Street Corridor Renovations.  The proposals are really quite interesting so take a look.

Main Street Rochester NY

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

Until a recent trip to the Memorial Art Gallery – to take advantage of Free Museum Day – I had no idea that the Main Street Bridge in Rochester NY was originally covered in structures much like the original London Bridge.  There’s an excellent history recap of Main St available on the RocWiki if you’d like even more of a history lesson.  An archaic style of bridge like that somehow makes me think Rochester hasn’t always been as behind on the times as it is now.  After all, they had the good sense to remove it.  A small digital copy of a painting of the Bridge can be seen below or see the full version at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Rochester Main Street Bridge – Colin Campbell Cooper

It’s always impressive to go and view Artwork in your local city.  Even a small city such as Rochester houses some famous Artwork by names you’ll recognize.

This next painting is one of my favorites at the Gallery from an Artist I’d previously not heard of.

The Exorcism of the Waves – Alessandro Magnasco