For the first time since 1904, the railroad drawbridge over the St. Joseph River in the city of St. Joseph is not being controlled by someone locally.
The Pere Marquette Railroad built the steel swing bridge in 1904 as taller ships needed to access the growing port city. About a century later, in 2009, CSX moved the person who operates the bridge out of a shack on the bridge itself to a shack that’s south of the bridge on Vine Street.
Now the railroad wants to eliminate the person altogether, if the U.S. Coast Guard is satisfied it’s safe after a two-month test. The railroad is using sensors and video to control the bridge from a CSX yard in Evansville, Indiana, 357 miles away. A person is still working in the shack in case problems happen.
Mike Moran, the city’s harbormaster, declined to give his opinion on the change.
“I will say the bridge has been operated on site for 122 years so it has a history of having an on-site bridge tender but there are other bridges around the country that are remotely operated, so we’ll see what happens,” Moran says.
Moran says boaters, commercial or recreational, who have problems with the bridge during the testing period should contact the Coast Guard office in Cleveland.
