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This is a steel bridge, and it's called the Steel Bridge, and, at one time, it connected the east and west sides of the Willamette River, in Portland, in a pivotal way by being the route US 99W, later OR-99W, crossed the river. Now, it's the pivotal point in the TriMet rail system, carrying all MAX lines over the river except, I suppose, the Orange Line, though the Orange, which brings people in from Milwaukie, becomes north Portland's Yellow Line as it courses through the Transit Mall. At least, I think it does.It's not the first photo I've ever taken of the Steel, but it's one of the best. It shows off all the charming detail and some of the structural features that make it so unique.
There's an elbow bend of the Willamette in the center of Portland, just north of where the Burnside Bridge crosses, and this is about the narrowest point of the river within Portland city limits. It's at this point the Steel crosses.
The original Steel Bridge was a swing span in this location, but the current bridge dates from 1912, making it 119 years old, more or less, at this writing. It can be seen from this angle that it's a double-deck bridge and that rail and bike/ped traffic has the bottom whereas car and rail traffic has the top. What's unique about that drawspan is that the bottom retracts into the top, meaning when river traffic needs to pass, if it can clear the un-lifted traffic deck only the lower rail deck needs to lift.
The original Steel Bridge was a swing span in this location, but the current bridge dates from 1912, making it 119 years old, more or less, at this writing. It can be seen from this angle that it's a double-deck bridge and that rail and bike/ped traffic has the bottom whereas car and rail traffic has the top. What's unique about that drawspan is that the bottom retracts into the top, meaning when river traffic needs to pass, if it can clear the un-lifted traffic deck only the lower rail deck needs to lift.
This makes the lower deck dangerous to be on if one should be so foolish as to use the inside rail deck as your crossing. We recall stories of people being trapped on that deck on lifting, before there was a ped/bike walkway there; their destiny was to be crushed to death between the two decks.
The bridge in this shot is doing what it does best, linking the east and west sides of the Rose City via transit-rail; a newer MAX bound to the Rose Quarter, an older MAX bound for the Portland Mall. Wikipedia claims it's perhaps the most 'multimodal' bridge in the world; the only double-deck lift bridge with independent lifts, and the second-oldest vertical-lift bridge in the world, second only to the Hawthorne, which is just around the corner.
It's old and new, rustic and modern. A contradiction in terms that somehow makes perfect sense.
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