7 Steps for Community Advocates
To Get Involved in Bridge Design
Bridges are public works, owned by the taxpayers that fund them. Communities have every right to expect that their views will be considered. Indeed, they should be considered a seamless part of the design team. But being a member of the team means that community advocates must participate knowledgeably and promptly, and respect the views of other participants.
1. Sign Up
Most bridge -building agencies have formal processes for community input. But first you must get your name on a mailing list, enroll on a project web site, or otherwise sign up. Once you do that you will receive copies of information, get invited to meetings, and generally be able to follow the progress of the project.
If no such process is available, ask the project management and the sponsoring agency to allow you to participate more fully. If that doesn’t work, get help from your elected officials. If they think that your views on bridges are important, the sponsoring agencies will, too.
Example: Community Advisory Committee:
Knowing that the people of Hamilton, OH highly valued their 19th century War Memorial, Ohio’s DOT recognized a community historic advisory committee as a full participant in the design of a replacement for their High-Main Street Bridge. The committee insisted that their new bridge emulate the appearance of the War Memorial.
High-Main Street Bridge, Hamilton, OH,
Example: Sunset as an Event
There is no substitute for the first-hand knowledge of the location possessed by the people who will use the bridge and those who will be its neighbors.
The people of Clearwater, FL celebrate the daily subtropical sunset over the Gulf of Mexico. They didn’t want their new bridge to block that view. In fact they wanted their bridge to enhance it. They made sure that their City Council knew that, and decided to spread out the bridge piers to avoid blocking the view, even though it added to the cost.
Clearwater Memorial Causeway, Clearwater, FL
2. Raise Your Issues
And listen to and respect the views of others. Of course, the issues fellow community members raise may be similar to your own, but there may be some surprises. More likely, there will be a bigger differences with the issues raised by the sponsoring agency. Those will be issues like meeting transportation requirements, complying with enviromental restrictions and staying within a budget. These are real, and community advocates need to treat them that way. The process is best understood as mutual education. The agency’s professionals and their consultants will know the most about bridge design. They need to educate the community about that. The community will know more about the location, its history, and their aspirations for it. They need to educate the agency’s professionals about those. The goal is to end up with a list of all concerns, goals and options, without regard for source.
For discussion of Costs see:
Example: Implementing an Unusual Idea:
Lake Quinsigamond between Worcester and Shrewsbury, MA hosts several rowing clubs and numerous races between clubs and between locl school crews. The Ken Burns Bridge is the racing finish line, and crowds gather on the bridge to cheer their favorites. The community asked for overlooks to be added to the bridge to accommodate racing fans (and people just wanting to enjoy the scene).
Ken Burns Bridge, Worcester-Shrewsbury, MAExample: Adding a New Capability
Sometimes community advocates are aware of needs that the sponsoring agency is not. Bringing these needs into the process gives everyone a chance to decide how necessary they are, and what is the best way to take care of them.
The new Clearwater Memorial Causeway rerouted a nearby street over the bridge, removing the pedestrian connection between the bridge and the city’s waterfront park. Community advocates asked that this pedestrian connection be restored by the addition of this innovative ramp .
Clearwater Memorial Causeway, Clearwater, FL
3. Make Sure the Right Skills are Available
Designing bridges requires the skills and insights of a wide range of professionals: structural engineers, foundation engineers, environmentatlists and construction experts. But the issues that community advocates raise other require other specialists, such as urban designers, landscape architects, historians and archeologists, who should be added to the team. The result should be a collaborative, interdisciplinary team with common goals and a common vocabulary, that works easily together and is qualified to address community issues, goals and options.
Example: Communication that Everyone Understands.
Community members don’t understand engineering drawings. Evrything must be translated into visualizations, models and easily understood diagrams. Helicopter and drone views are fun but useless. Few people will actually see those views.
Community advocates in Alexandria, VA were trying to choose between alternative bridges 70’ high and 150’ high for the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Seeing balloons flown at the alternative heights gave the community an easily-understood way to compare how high each bridge would actually be in the landscape.
Jones Point Park, Alexandria, VAExample: A Need for Archeologists
Alexandria’s community advocates also asked about the rumored presence of an African American cemetery buried beneath a Gulf Oil station. Archeologists were added to the team. They confirmed that the cemetery was there. It had been paved over in the 1930’s.
The Gulf Oil station needed to be removed in any case as part of the the highway widening for the bridge. As part of the bridge project the site was redesigned as a memorial to those buried there, and is now known as the Freedman’s Cemetery.
Freedman’s Cemetary, Alexandria, VA
4. Seek Allies
The identification and listing of issues will also identify the people and organizations that are concerned about each one. This whole process is about creating a consensus behind one specific design concept. So, it’s not too soon to start finding like-minded people. It’s OK if they have not stated their concern in exactly the same way as yours. The goal is to find areas of common ground that can be built upon. Allies may come from different and surprising points. You will often find members of the staffs of the sponsoring agency or their consultants who are sympathetic to what you are trying to accomplish.
Example: Restaurants + City Planners + Civic Activists
The new Grand Avenue Bridge in Glenwood Springs, CO created pedestrian space under the bridge. The restaurants in the adjoining downtown buildings wanted to use the space for warm weather seating. Others wanted to use the space for musical performances. The city’s planners wanted to extend the space another 20’ under the bridge to allow a line-of-sight connection between two alleys in the adjoining blocks to encourage pedestrian circulation.
CO DOT satisfied all of these concerns by choosing a structural system that enlarged increased the headroom under the bridge, facilitating and absorbed the noise from traffic passing overhead.
Grand Avenue Bridge, Glenwood Springs, CO
Example: Pedestrian/Bike Advocates + Businesses
When the replacement for the Court Street in Owego, NY was being planned the businesses along the Susquehanna River realized that they shared a common interest with advocates for a pedestrian and bicycle path across the bridge. The pedestrian and bicycle advocates wanted better access to the trails along the opposite bank of the river. The businesses realized that all of those people moving at a comfortable pace across the river would be a great audience for advertising their presence and their wares.
Court Street over the Susquehanna River, Owego, NY
5. Work Constructively
Design is a process of balancing needs, desires, structural capabilities and costs, with the goal of creating a bridge that is efficient, economical and elegant. Pet ideas are a great beginning, but they need to stand up to the realities of structural performance, durability and cost as well as compete with other ideas. After all, others’ pet ideas may well influence your ideas about what will work best for the community. Often opinions coalesce around options which were on nobody’s list at the beginning
Example: Evaluating the Effect on a Historic Building
The Virginia Street Bridge in Reno, NV needed to be raised farther above the Truckee River so the annual spring floods could get under the bridge. But raising Virginia Street could impact the historic hotel adjoining the river (to the left in the photo). The effects of this change were actually marked directly on the building and viewed by the community advisory committee, (and the State Historic Preservation Officer). They all decided that the degree of impact was small and was acceptable.
Virginia Street over the Truckee River, Reno, NV, Example: Finding the Middle Ground.
Community advocates from both Worcester and Shrewsbury, MA were committed to maximising sidewalk widths across the new Ken Burns Bridge to encourage pedestrian and bicyclists’ travel between the two towns. Unfortunately, an existing park at the Worcester end of the bridge limited the amount of land available for widening the sidewalks. The community advocates accepted 8’ wide sidewalks (a significant improvement to the previous sidewalks) in order to avoid the legal, environmental and cost impacts and delays of trying to gain additional land.
Ken Burns Bridge, Worcester - Shrewsbury, MA
6. Assist the Consensus
Since this whole process is about creating a consensus behind one specific design concept, it is in everybody’s interest to work toward that goal. Otherwise there is no bridge, and the needs the bridge is meant to serve go unmet. Remember the meaning of consensus: not everyone gets everything they want, but everyone gets enough of what they want that they can live with the result. So, be open-minded about options that give you most of what you want, but also solve problems that are the concerns of others.
Example: Participate in processes that encourage Consensus.
Straw polls, community preference surveys and other methods of participating are a start. Better yet is a voting membership in the group making the decision. Or best of all, approval of the decision by the elected body representing the community.
For the St Croix River Crossing the Minnesota DOT organized a Community/Interagency Coordination Committee which guided its development and approved all of the important elements.
St. Croix River Crossing , Stillwater MN - Houghton, WIExample: Accepting Greater Bridge Height because the Bridge was still below the Trees:
In spite of strong concerns about the visual impact of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, commuity Advocates in Alexandria, VA were willing to accept a higher bridge once they were convinced to would not be visible from most locations of concern.
Woodrow Wilson Bridge, Washington, DC
7. Continue through Design and Construction
As the project progresses through detailed design and construction unanticipated problems and new ideas wil occur. Community advocates need to stay involved, both to ensure that decisions made to date are not watered down, and to make their voices heard in the decion-making about how to react to the new information.
Example: Community Group offers to do the Flags
The design for the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Bismarck, ND included overlooks at the five piers, each to be dedicated to one of the armed services. After construction was underway a community veterans group asked that flag poles be added to each overlook, promising to buy the flags and taking responsibility for raising and lowering them on holidays and weekends. The North Dakota DOT agreed.
Veterans Memorial Bridge, Bismarck, NDExample: Found Money = More Lighting
As construction of the Rich Street Bridge in Columbus, OH proceeded the contractor found that the money he had budgeted for aesthetic lighting was greater than what the lighting was costing. He asked if the city would like to add more lighting to the design. With the community’s approval, additional lighting was added to the monumental pylons at each corner of the bridge.
Rich Street Bridge, Columbus, OH
Celebrate Success!
If the previous steps have been done well, the community will have been involved in each step, will understand all the reasons behind the design and will realize that their preferences have guided the outcome. The result will be the most satisfying outcome of all. They will say:
“We did it ourselves”!
The 7 Steps condense and summarize a complex process. For more depth and detail consult:
Frederick Gottemoeller, Rich Street Bridge, Columbus, OH