Bicycle unfriendly Missouri bridge gets negative international press

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is broadcasting a series about a correspondent who is bicycling across the U.S. The past week he has been cycling across Missouri; this week's broadcast focuses on a poor experience he had crossing a long, bicycle-unfriendly bridge from Missouri into Illinois:

I crossed from Missouri into Illinois this morning, except I was supposed to be in Kentucky. In belting rain I missed my turnoff. The three states meet here along the Mississippi River. I crossed the wrong bridge.

Bridges are probably the single most spectacular element of American infrastructure. They've laced together remote points of the country. But these bridge crossings are not for bicycles. For many kilometres as I approached the Mississippi River, the spans were visible, rising like a giant billboard out of the road in the distance. And as it neared my biggest fear was realised. A kilometre wide, rising about a hundred metres above the river, there was no shoulder.