Pelican Island Bridge

[IronTiger]

I've been reading some articles (many behind paywalls) about the state of the Pelican Island Bridge in Galveston. As you may know, earlier posts by me on the subject indicate that in 2005, I was fascinated by the railroad paralleling it (though components were already gone in 2005, and sometime post-Ike, the abandoned railroad leading up to it was stripped out: the line is on an extremely tight R.O.W. with not much room on the waterside or the road side.

So upon realization that the bridge dates to 1959, and that the bridge is in poor condition, I have a few questions:

1) How bad a condition is the old bridge, anyway? Some scouring damage was mentioned, and studies are due for revealing more damage.

2) This article discussed a railroad bridge out there as well. Given that the last trains probably went there in the 1980s and the line post-bridge is completely gone (and has been for many many years), what would they need a railroad out there for anyway?

3) Are the elevated viaducts the same age?

4) What do you think the turn-out will be? Personally, I could imagine a new bridge going out to Pelican Island with the old one closed to vehicular traffic and used as a pedestrian/bikeway.

[Luminare]

The bridge to Pelican Island is definitely in pretty rough shape. I remember going over that bridge a lot when I was at Texas A&M Galveston for a year (or 1/2 year because of Ike). I remember that bridge was always very bumpy and the draw bridge isn't that great either.

 

With all the new development efforts made by A&M Galveston post-Ike as part of there master plan I curious as to why new infrastructure hasn't been put in place for the increased use of the bridge.

 

I would imagine it's been on the back shelf because they been focusing on Downtown and the Seawall as major areas of development and even though Pelican Island is mosquito infested marsh that sucks to live on....it's going to be developed a lot in the coming years for sure.

 

The elevated viaducts that lead up to the bridge are either around the same age or a couple decades younger I'm not too sure, but I would say the latter of the two.

 

By the way, they still run trains to Galveston Island. That large rail yard and everything is a major help to the port and is used very frequently. In fact they did a fabulous job of completely redoing the elevated bridge station (where they lift the bridge up for ship traffic thats right next to the main car bridge).

 

No trains go to Pelican Island though and I don't remember them ever going to that area at all.

 

This is just my 2 cents on the matter and my experience....not a bridge expert or foremost in knowledge pertaining to Galveston infrastructure.

[IronTiger]

I understand trains still run to Galveston island, but they ran to Pelican Island too, which is what the article was discussing. Trains haven't run to Pelican Island in decades, of course, though I screencapped some pictures of Google Street View, as seen on my old blog here, a nearly four-year-old post that's describing something that I remember from almost a decade ago (wow, it's been that long??)

The point is, there seems to be talk that they want to build a railroad line as part of the new Pelican Island bridge, which is weird, as I mentioned before, as there's no infrastructure in that direction as it was torn out decades ago.