SOUTH BEND — Firefighters took measurements Friday on the old railroad bridge near Angela Boulevard — and made sure a team of University of Notre Dame engineering students didn’t plop into the frigid St. Joseph River — as the city started to size up what it would take to convert the bridge for pedestrian use.
The fenced-off bridge would fit into a paved, multiuse trail on roughly 2.5 miles of an abandoned railway from the city’s East Bank Trail to Western Avenue. If all goes well, city officials say, it could take five to 10 years to complete.
The “coal line trail,” as it’s often called, would cross the city’s popular Riverside Trail just a few feet from the railroad bridge and pass under the Portage Avenue bridge near Elwood Avenue, then link to Muessel Grove Park, Holy Cross School and the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center.
It would mesh with the city’s evolving network of bike routes, crossing the bike lanes currently painted on the pavement on Orange Street and Colfax Avenue, along with the bike lanes the city hopes to paint on Lincoln Way and Western Avenue.
This railway was last used to haul coal to Notre Dame in the 1990s. City engineer Corbitt Kerr said trains crossed the bridge until, one day, an engineer decided the tilt in the tracks was too risky. The city is just beginning negotiations to acquire use of the railway, where the rails and wooden ties have been removed.
On Friday, one student ventured onto the bridge itself with firefighters. Two other students floated in a red, inflatable raft underneath with firefighters to measure, tap hammers and listen to the aged concrete supports.