The Mississippi River is an environmental gem, tourist attraction and transportation and shipping route all in one for Western Wisconsin.
But, it can be awfully tough to get across if you start having bridge problems. A ferry service should be at least explored to see if it could take some traffic and stress off the bridges.
There are no fewer than seven bridges over the Big River that connect what could be defined as Western Wisconsin to Minnesota and Iowa. Several others run over parts of the river or provide rail service only.
Thousands of people use these bridges every day to commute to and from work, for pleasure driving, to truck goods across the river, etc.
Most of the time, these structures provide safe, convenient transportation routes. However, we saw recently what can happen when a bridge has to be closed.
When the Highways 43/54 bridge that connects Winona, Minnesota, with Fountain City, Wisconsin, had to be closed because inspectors discovered rusty plates it forced people to go up to 65 miles out of their way to cross the river.
The Highway 43/54 bridge closing is only one recent example bridge problems and the impacts they have. Minnesota transportation officials have cut off traffic at three busy river crossings since March. The aggressive approach follows last summer’s failure of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities area.
In all three cases, compromised steel plates connecting bridge beams, identified by investigators as a key factor in the collapse of Interstate 35W, were cited as the reasons for closing.
Bridges get closed for other reasons. Earlier this month, the Stillwater Lift Bridge was closed for about 5 1/2 hours after a truck became wedged beneath its girders. Commuters between La Crosse and La Crescent put up with delays for months while the bridge known as Big Blue was repaired, and a second bridge built, in recent years.
While no officials like to talk about it, the potential for additional bridge problems exists, as infrastructure in this area and around the country ages and needs repair.
During the Highway 43/54 closing, Ashley Furniture and other employers in the area had to scramble to help employees get to work. A ferry system, using primarily tour boats from up and down the river, took up some of the transportation short fall at the time.
It was temporary and pieced together out of necessity. It handled only passengers, who then had to be bussed to their places of employment.
The short term ferry system certainly would not provide much relief as an alternative to the bridges. But, it could be used as a catalyst to look into a possible fulltime ferry system, which could handle automobiles as well as passengers.
Such ferry systems are regular parts of the transportation networks in Sidney, Australia, San Francisco, some East Coast urban areas and other places around the world.
You can come up with several arguments against such an idea. Certainly, a ferry would be much slower than just driving over a bridge. Cost effectiveness of a ferry system could be a problem. You have to ask how many people and shippers of goods would actually use such a system.
One ferry, running from one place in Wisconsin to one place in Minnesota or Iowa, would not provide much of an alternative since people still would have to commute to catch it.
But, perhaps 2-3 ferries, which could even run out of multiple ports up and down the river during a work week, could help.
At one time, ferries were an integral part of the Mississippi River transportation system. As early as the 1850s, such vessels were moving people and goods across, and up and down the river.
Today, they are at most a novelty. The Cassville Car Ferry connects two National Scenic Byways — the Great River Road and the Iowa Great River Road. The ferry served the early settlement as far back as 1836 and it continues today, making the same trip back and forth across the mighty Mississippi. It is the oldest operating car ferry in the state of Wisconsin.
Perhaps the best known ferry system on the river, the Dorena-Hickman Ferry, which connected Missouri with Kentucky, has been closed because of the lack of state funding.
Any return to ferries as an alternative to bridges would require education and marketing to get people to use them, a substantial capital investment so the vessels would be modern and able to cross the river expediently, and probably have to be a private-public sector project.
But, certainly in these days of $4 per gallon gas, detours when a bridge is out cause hardships and increased costs for the public and businesses. And, again, the potential for more bridge closures is relatively high since we know our infrastructure has been somewhat neglected.
Ferries should at least get a look, not as replacements for bridges, but at least as vessels that could give the public and businesses needed alternatives.
