Effort to save the Riverside Bridge for bike/ped use dealt a setback

The effort to save the Riverside Bridge in Ozark, Missouri, for bicycle and pedestrian use was dealt a setback recently when county officials erected a fence, closing the bridge to all bicycle and pedestrian access. As recently as September, 2010, the bridge was still open to motor vehicle traffic, carrying 1200 automobiles per day.  In September, the bridge was closed.  According to a story in the Christian County Headliner:

That event spurred a Save the Riverside Bridge effort encouraging county government not to tear down the bridge but to save it for pedestrian use; and to relocate a replacement structure.

Then residents were again shocked several weeks ago when the bridge was blocked, again without ceremony or notice, even to pedestrians and bikers with an 8-foot chain-link fence nearly impossible to breach.

“This came out of left field,” said Kris Dyer, who formed the preservation group. “We had no idea. I just wanted to find out the reasons for that.  We were driving on it six months ago.”

It’s necessary, said Lou Lapaglia, presiding Christian County commissioner.

“I asked the Ozark Special Road District to fence it off,” Lapaglia said. “The reason is it had to be done.”

Why?

[S]ome residents say it’s a ploy to increase public urgency to expedite an unpopular but more economical solution: tearing down the historic structure and replacing it with a new one at that same location.

Dyer said when talking with another preservationist, that possibility emerged.

“He said it might cause the same thing,” Dyer said. “People might think it is long gone.”

Residents will be less likely to oppose tearing  down the bridge if they think it is a lost cause, she said.

But she said the cause is not lost and the efforts to save the bridge for pedestrian use has not waned.

“The bridge being used for pedestrian use—this is still our goal,” Dyer said. “We are still raising money and we are still needing a lot more information.”

Save the Bridge advocates are hoping to pack county council meeting this Thursday, when the council will discuss the bridge.  It is the Christian County Commission meeting on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 9:10am.  The meeting will be held in the Christian County Courthouse on the Square, Ozark, Missouri, in Rm 100.  

An ordinance regarding the Riverside Bridge is on the agenda.

The bridge is potentially part of a trails system connecting Ozark with the large Ozark Greenways trails system in adjoining Springfield/Greene County.