The city of Marion had a ribbon-cutting this morning (July 1) for a “CeMar Trail Gateway Bridge”. Here’s a press release from the city and story at Corridor Business Journal. The bridge is part of the CeMar Trail.
The trail is using the corridor the “Milwaukee Road” railroad used in Marion, and the bridge is in the same spot as the railroad overpass over Business 151. The bridge is slightly askew from the straight line of the trail to be closer to perpendicular to the road, as can be seen in the photo with the CBJ story. The bridge replaced a road underpass in use since the beginning of the 20th century at 1st Street, just to the west. Its opening affected the routing of the highway, although there was a surprisingly long gap between the new bridge over Indian Creek to the south and the railroad overpass’ opening.
The overpass was 60 years old when it was demolished, and abandoned some time in the 2000s. Marion has wanted to turn the right-of-way into a trail basically since that happened. Here’s a document from 2017 about trails on the northwest side of the Cedar Rapids area that would connect to this trail.