New Harmony Bridge

The Courier Press published the story of Indiana coming up with $10m for a replacement bridge. Illinois said they are broke.

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/aug/14/illinois-wont-offer-money-new-harmony-bruidge/

What am I missing here? Wouldn't $10M do a real good job of repairing the old bridge?

http://www.wsiltv.com/news/three-states/Board-votes-to-close-aging-Wabash-River-bridge-152285845.html

The closure was pushed up to May 21 due to IDOT.

New Harmony Bridge will permanently close May 29th 2012. There is no money to fix it.

Please visit http://www.in.gov/dnr/historic/files/harmonyway_bridge.pdf for the National Register application for the bridge. The bridge needs help! It needs to become owned by Illinois or Indiana, but neither state wants it. It needs a champion, or a campaign to make it state-owned. It does seem that the bridge was poorly administered over the years--in 1956 the bridge owned cameras and typewriters, and advertised in the Carmi newspaper, which was owned by one of the commissioners. It is the last bridge owned by a federally-chartered corporation. It's very bumpy but I will use it as long as I can.

Something very wrong here! This bridge was nearly debt free in 1955 and yet they continued to collect tolls for 55 years and now it can't pay for repairs. I smell a rat! The county officials who were the administrators of the bridge company must have squandered a fortune on over priced and unnecessary work over the last 50 years and now the birds have come home to roost. Unfortunately most of the responsible people are likely deceased. Find the Indianapolis News story of 1955 and it will give a lot of background about this. In 14 years the entire debt was paid off but in 56 years since then the bridge in millions in the red????

Indiana Landmarks has become concerned about the bridge's state and questions about how the bridge is being administered. Article:

http://www.indianalandmarks.org/NewsPhotos/Pages/NewsFeatures.aspx?NewsID=653

If you want to find the Indianapolis News article it was from the May 30, 1955 edition "$635,000 Span Costs $3 Million" on page 15. I found it in a clippings file at the Indiana State Library and used a camera to take a photo. Almost posted it here but The Chicago Tribune bought the Indianapolis papers so they might consider it copyright infringement to post the whole article.

If this bridge were to be rehabilitated, I'd like to see new approaches. In the looks of the one approach-way, kind of on spidery bents and such for me, a new stinger would dress it up. I see older bridges get new approaches in Pittsburgh. I think this bridge could still serve tolled traffic better if it got the same treatment.

The bridge was not opened in 1932 as listed here, the bridge was opened with a big dedication ceremony in Dec. 1930.

This bridge was rehabbed during the 1970's,cause I remember lanes being closed and flagmen when my dad and I took a bird dog to be trained in Owensboro,KY. So it has been rehabbed twice I know of.

Anyone know if bikes are allowed to cross the bridge?

I live in Illinois and work in Indiana. I cross this bridge five days a week and it saves me 25 minutes each way. Me and my family depend on this bridge, especially when we need to take our children to the doctor or hospital.

The "Facts" are very outdated.

This bridge was closed from September 2007 and re-opened in April 2008.

This bridge is open, as we drove across it last Saturday.

They still charge the $1 dollar toll. The road bed looked

to have been resurfaced, but then ground down level to the old road bed.

This bridge closed "indefinitely" at 3:00pm on Tuesday, September 26, 2007.

Its open to traffic.