Once again, the annual list of Iowa’s structurally deficient bridges includes Eighth Avenue over the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids. The list comes from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, a “nonpartisan federation” promoting investment in infrastructure. It pegs the bridge date at 1938, but I’m not sure that tells the whole story.
The first bridge was built in 1938, or started at least. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on August 31, 1938, that George Koss Construction bid $167,777.77 to build the bridge. US 30 was rerouted onto it in 1940 and would use the bridge for 13 years.
However, the bridge got an overhaul in 1970. The Gazette said on September 30, 1969, that reconstruction “will include removal of the present 42-foot-wide bridge deck and the construction of a 52-foot deck plus two five-foot sidewalks.” On November 5, the Gazette reported the contract went to Cramer Bros. Construction for $639,050. This was more than expected, but inflation was high at the time. (Seven months earlier, when the public improvements commissioner thought it’d be $300,000, the main 1A story was President Nixon asking Congress “to retain the full 10 percent income tax surcharge through mid-1970.”)
Does that count as a new bridge? The piers are original, and the beams probably are too, so half-and-half at best. The deck and everything visible at street level is 1970, although that portion is showing its age as well and at some point every other streetlight pole got sawed off. Cedar Rapids has a target date of 2023 to replace the bridge, with integration into the flood control system, at a cost somewhere around $30 million. Before inflation, that is.