BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A group of designers, artists, and community activists are fighting to save the bridge. A rendering by the landscape architect Michael Beightol illustrates the viaduct’s potential as a linear park. Image courtesy Michael Beightol.

IN ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA, A HISTORY OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ANIMATES THE DEBATE OVER A PIECE OF CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE.

Michael Keys used to walk the McBride Viaduct nearly every day to and from school. It was the most convenient route over the busy rail yard that bisected his east side Erie, Pennsylvania, neighborhood. Now, as a member of the local urban design advocacy group Erie CPR: Connect + Respect, Keys is one of dozens of residents fighting to save the 1,700-foot-long viaduct. The organization argues that the bridge is a crucial linkage between some of Erie’s poorest communities and that tearing it down could do harm to populations already considered vulnerable.

Erie CPR projects that removing the viaduct, which has been closed to vehicles since 2010, will force residents to cross the tracks at grade, which can be dangerous, or walk some 2,000 feet to a busy road known as the Bayfront Connector. With its high-speed traffic and blind corners, the connector is far less safe for pedestrians than the viaduct, says Adam Trott, an architect and the president of Erie CPR. Another danger, especially for children, is daily exposure to vehicle emissions. A recent World Health Organization report found that 10 percent of deaths among children under the age of five are attributable to air pollution.

The city’s decision to demolish the viaduct, which was originally built in 1938 and overhauled in the 1970s, is based on a feasibility study conducted by the engineering firm L. R. Kimball. The engineers reported that rehabilitating or replacing the viaduct were cost-prohibitive, in part because the bridge no longer meets basic road width requirements. And yet, having studied 11 alternatives—including a tunnel and a new pedestrian bridge—the team never considered what Trott thinks is the most logical option: converting the entire viaduct into a pedestrian and bicycle path. “Our big complaint was, ‘You didn’t look at the bike/pedestrian option,’” Trott says.

The city is planning to tear down the viaduct, despite evidence that it is an important transit link for low-income individuals without access to a motor vehicle. Image courtesy Erie CPR.

Erie CPR has put forth a plan to repair only what is necessary to make the bridge safe for pedestrians and bicyclists. Such an option would cost a fraction of the rehabilitation schemes studied by L. R. Kimball, and only slightly more than the $1.5 million the city has agreed to pay for demolition. Renderings by Michael Beightol, a landscape architect who grew up in Erie and now works in Cleveland, show a zigzagging path flanked by geometric planters full of trees and native grasses, with strategically located lookouts. “It’s got so much potential, in terms of being an open space that’s free from cars,” Beightol says of the viaduct. “Most importantly, it connects the city.”

Several heavyweights in the design and planning world have stated their support for saving the viaduct, including Terry Schwarz; John Norquist, Honorary ASLA; and the Columbia University psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove, whose work focuses on health issues caused by inequity. Given the economic snowball that such infrastructure-turned-park projects can kick off—often so successful that they create concerns on the opposite end of the environmental justice spectrum—it’s hard to grasp why a struggling Rust Belt town like Erie wouldn’t entertain the idea. Turning the viaduct into a linear park could benefit east siders but also Erie as a whole.

Kids who live on the east side of Erie often take the McBride Viaduct to and from school. The neighborhoods near the viaduct, which was closed to traffic in 2010, are predominantly African American and Latino. Image courtesy Erie CPR.

Lisa Austin, a professor of art and design at nearby Edinboro University and a cofounder of Erie CPR, says it would be a chance for Mayor Joe Schember “to be a hero for the city.” Converting the viaduct into a pedestrian path “fits perfectly” into every master plan the city has ever adopted, Austin says, including the most recent one, led by Charles Buki in 2016. “It aligns with every principle.”

Trott says one problem with the feasibility study was that it lacked input from an urban designer or landscape architect. As a result, the study team underestimated the importance of connectivity to east side residents, more than 40 percent of whom don’t own a vehicle, he says. The areas around the viaduct are predominantly black, with significant Latino and refugee populations as well. Whereas African Americans make up roughly 17 percent of the citywide population, in the neighborhoods surrounding the viaduct, they constitute anywhere from 30 percent to nearly 60 percent of the population.

In Erie, the disparity between the fortunes of white and black residents is stark: The median income of a black family in Erie is less than half that of a white family, and unemployment is four times as high. In 2017, the financial news site 24/7 Wall Street dubbed Erie the “worst city for black Americans.”

The viaduct has become a hot-button issue within the local African American community, with east side pastors and community organizers rallying to save it. “What is a bridge? A bridge is connection. A bridge is hope. Save the viaduct,” the artist Abdullah Washington, an Erie native, wrote in a 2015 op-ed in the Erie Times-News.

For many people, there is a sense of history repeating itself. In a separate opinion piece, published in the Erie Reader, the Reverend Charles Mock, the pastor of Community Missionary Baptist Church, compared what’s happening with the viaduct to the city’s not-so-distant history of redlining. Trott says even the viaduct itself is a victim of active neglect: “The only reason there’s any deterioration on this bridge at all is because [the city] didn’t clean out the storm drains,” he says.

Austin says the gap between the experiences of white and black residents is a huge factor in the debate about the viaduct, which became national news this past March when the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman wrote a front-page story about the bridge’s fate. Many white residents, Austin says, simply fail to grasp how an old, crumbling bridge could be a vital transit link for some residents, or how being forced to walk an extra half mile one way could constitute an environmental justice issue. “The white bubble is so intact here. It’s unbelievable.”

Mayor Schember, for example, responded to concerns about pedestrian safety along the Bayfront Connector by sharing that he had walked that stretch of road and had felt perfectly safe, she says. “You’re a tall, healthy, wealthy white guy!” Austin, who is white, remembers thinking. “What’s that got to do with the mother of two kids, or somebody walking home from third shift, or going to school?” (The mayor’s staff did not return requests for comment.)

Amenities in the proposed plan include seating areas, native plantings, and strategically located lookouts. Image courtesy Michael Beightol.

Similarly, the environmental justice analysis conducted as part of the feasibility study concluded that although the study area included minority and low-income residents, the demolition of the viaduct did “not cause disproportionately high and adverse effects” on that population. Austin vehemently disagrees with that assessment. Forcing minority kids who may already be at risk of severe health issues to walk an extra mile each day along a busy arterial road is “criminal,” she says. “You’re basically saying, poor people, you can walk from Erie to Washington, D.C., every year, extra, because we don’t give a shit about you.”

Despite pleas to save the viaduct, the city has not wavered in its resolution to tear it down. (Ironically, the bridge was originally built to protect children; a local pastor lobbied for its construction after a local boy was killed crossing the railroad tracks.) On April 30, 2018, Erie CPR filed a civil lawsuit arguing that the planned demolition represented a pattern of “intentional discrimination,” halting demolition. On October 29, however, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, citing insufficient evidence. A few days later, the viaduct was closed to even foot traffic. Demolition is scheduled to begin November 27.

With signage and a little lighting, Beightol says the viaduct could become a billboard for Erie’s east side. Image courtesy Michael Beightol.

But Erie CPR isn’t finished. The group has appealed the decision in the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Trott says the group may find a more sympathetic judge there. It’s unclear whether the court will choose to stay the demolition as it reviews the appeal, however, which means the fate of the viaduct is still up in the air. The appeal is the group’s final card to play. But as Austin puts it, “If you have a kid, and there’s only a 5 percent chance of saving them, you’re gonna try. You’re gonna do whatever you can.”

Timothy A. Schuler, editor of Now, can be reached at timothyaschuler@gmail.com and on Twitter @Timothy_Schuler.