City, County and Neighborhood News

Communication should be easy. Just open your mouth and talk. Which makes me wonder why the city gets tongue-tied about a bicycle bridge.

I’ve found a half-dozen experts eager to talk about the city’s doomed bike bridge over Interstate 5 at Riverside Boulevard—engineers, lawyers, even a guy who investigated construction fiascos for insurance companies.

They are knowledgeable and informative. One word at a time, they helped me understand what probably went wrong when the city accepted a low-bid contract for a $12 million bridge connecting the Del Rio Trail to the Sacramento River Parkway bike path.

The city’s condemned bicycle bridge over Interstate 5 and Riverside Boulevard insults a local icon. Recently poured substandard concrete embarrasses a 52-year-old monument.

I’m talking about the railroad bridge next to the doomed bike span.

These days, the old rail bridge is defaced by graffiti and brutalized by construction framework related to the new span next door. But there’s nothing wrong with the old freeway overpass.

Last summer, a Laguna Beach woman decided to kick people off the sand near her oceanfront home.

“I’m not joking around,” she screamed. “It’s not harassment on the beach, it’s harassment in my whole property. Get out of here! Now!”

She dragged a rope across the beach, marked an imaginary boundary and continued to shout. Beachgoers packed up and trudged away.