Arlington Bridge: A long history of promise and disappointment

The Arlington Bridge is Winnipeg's longest span but its story is far longer — underscored by colourful lore, unfulfilled promise and the weight of paint.

The history of the 111-year-old steel truss is also marked by a patchwork of repairs and Band-Aid solutions that have managed to prolong its life 80 years beyond the first calls for its replacement.

Until now, that is.

A recent engineering assessment, part of a study to see whether the structure could last another 25 years, found the ongoing corrosion has reached a point where annual safety repairs are no longer viable.

The bridge was immediately and indefinitely closed Tuesday to all traffic.

A chronicle of disappointment has dogged the bridge ever since a link spanning the rail yards was initially identified as a vital necessity in the early 1900s.

The CPR's rail yards severed the city in 1881 and expanded until the surrounding municipalities — which would amalgamate with Winnipeg in 1971 — boxed it in.

The 465-hectare yards became an enormous chasm between the north and south. Politicians proposed the Brant-Brown Bridge, an overpass to reconnect them.

At the time, Brant Street abutted the rail yards on the south and Brown Street bordered them to the north.

The names changed as part of a grand plan to establish an urban highway along what is now Arlington Street, according to local historian and blogger Christian Cassidy, who has researched it extensively, hosted walking tours and was on a community consultation panel about its future in 2018.

The idea was to ease congestion on Main Street while also creating a route unimpeded by the rail yards. Main was routinely blocked by eight sets of tracks and bustling train traffic until the subway at Higgins Avenue was constructed in 1904.

But even then, flooding often left the subway impassable.

The plan for the central beltway, as it was known, actually called for two new bridges. In addition to the one over the rail yards, another was needed across the Assiniboine River to link Arlington and Harrow Street. 

Even before construction on the Arlington Bridge began in 1911, the beltway proposal had fallen apart, Cassidy said. Residents farther south from the tracks, in Wolseley, weren't keen on a highway through their neighbourhood.