City wants feedback on long-imagined pedestrian bridge
By Christina Tatu
Bethlehem officials have long imagined a pedestrian bridge spanning the Lehigh River and connecting the city’s two downtowns, and later this month they want to know if the public shares that same vision.
As part of a recently launched feasibility study for the pedestrian bridge, city officials are hosting a virtual forum at 5:30 p.m. May 25 to provide an overview of the study and gather input on what community members want from a pedestrian crossing, including where it could potentially go.
Details on how to sign up for the meeting and the project so far are available on a dedicated website city officials set up: www. bridgebethlehem.com.
“A project like this can be extremely impactful to the city in many ways,” said Bethlehem Planning Director Darlene Heller. “We are a unique city. We have two downtowns that have been divided by this river forever. We have ArtsQuest and SteelStacks on one side, and the festivals across the river.”
A pedestrian and bicycle bridge would consolidate the two sides of the river, and it would create an accessible link to the city’s waterfront for those who might be unable to navigate the area’s nature trails, Heller said.
The idea of a pedestrian bridge started in 2016 as a grassroots effort driven by residents, including members of the local Sierra Club and Lehigh University’s South Side Initiative. They started by holding meetings at the Charles A. Brown Ice House on Sand Island to drum up interest in the project.
The group managed to get $60,000 from Northampton County’s open space fund, another $40,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and some money from the city to conduct a feasibility study.
That study kicked off at the end of March and is being conducted by WRT Planning + Design, the same group behind the design of SteelStacks and the ArtsQuest campus. A task force of 15 members, including bike and pedestrian advocates, representatives from north and south Bethlehem, LANTA and Northampton County has also been meeting as part of the process.
The proposed bridge doesn’t yet have a location, though it would be somewhere between the Minsi Trail and Hill to Hill bridges. The study will examine potential locations, cost and develop a timeline for when the bridge could be constructed.
Doug Roysdon, a member of the original citizens group that advocated for the bridge, said being a pedestrian-friendly city is where the future is. A pedestrian bridge would have many positive aspects to it like health benefits, the environmental benefit as more people ditch their cars and turn to walking and biking, and the economic possibilities.
“I think the bridge gives Bethlehem
a physical dimension to its tourism. That means you don’t just come and sit at a concert or sit at a restaurant,” Roysdon said. “There’s a beautiful walk down by the river or a ride over the river, and that’s physical.”
Roysdon pictures the bridge as also having space for artists and musicians to perform and for street vendors to set up shop. He hopes it can be lit at night. Such a bridge would make Bethlehem even more of a destination and encourage overnight visits, he said.
The bridge was also be identified as a connector of the city’s many trails, which include the Delaware & Lehigh Canal Trail to the north, the Monocacy Way, and the South Bethlehem Greenway. Nearby is the Saucon Rail Trail, which is planned to eventually connect to Quakertown.
“You have all these trails, but they are cut off by the river,” said Scott Slingerland, executive director of the Coalition for Appropriate Transportation in Bethlehem.
A pedestrian’s only option to continue on the trail network would be to cross one of the city’s three bridges: The Fahy, Hill to Hill or Minsi Trail. But these bridges carry a lot of vehicles and have narrow sidewalks, which aren’t great for pedestrians, Slingerland said.
At least one cyclist, Patrick Ytsma, died several days after he was struck by a car on the Fahy Bridge in December 2011.
In addition to safety, the bridge also has the potential to add new vistas from which people can enjoy the architectural features that help define Bethlehem, such as Central Moravian Church steeple, the Bethlehem Steel blast furnace or the star on South
Mountain.
It becomes like its own “floating park” over the river, Slingerland said.
“You don’t have that vehicle noise. It’s a more peaceful way to cross on foot or on bike,” he said.
Perhaps the most prominent example of a pedestrian bridge is the Walkway Over the Hudson, the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge that spans 1.28 miles over the Hudson River in upstate New York. That bridge originally opened as the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge in 1889.
It caught fire in 1974, probably from a spark from a train’s brakes. It was rebuilt and reopened in October 2009 as the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park and has become a huge tourist attraction, bringing in 600,000 visitors annually from all over the world, according to the attraction’s website.
Locally, the Mansion House Bridge, a 255-foot-span over the Lehigh River, was completed in 2018 connecting downtown Jim Thorpe with a stretch of D&L Trail that goes all the way into Northampton County. The $4.1 million project had been in the works for 25 years, Slingerland said.
A Bethlehem bridge would have to be significantly longer and taller, likely costing much more to build. Other difficulties include constructing over an active rail line. The Norfolk Southern Railway owns most of the river frontage and the bridge would also cross through a flood plain which may require special permits, Slingerland said.
Morning Call reporter Christina Tatu can be reached at 610-8206583 or ctatu@mcall.com.