Readers will recall that the 77-year-old bridge connecting Downtown to Boyle Heights has so called concrete cancer (something called Alkai Silica Reaction) and needs to be retrofitted or replaced—there's a 70% chance the thing could collapse in a quake within 50 years. Blogdowntown reports that a meeting was held last night where a draft EIR and new design were presented for a replacement bridge, and as earlier assumed, it was a pretty cable design that made the cut. Named the "3-Dual Tower Cable Supported Viaduct," the new schematic shows a wider bridge that offers more options for walkers and bikers than the previous design, which was greeted with boos and hisses at a community meeting in February. The bridge, under consideration for a place on the National Register of Historic Places, is a popular filming and photographing spot so they'll have to find other places for Paper photo shoots when construction actually starts around 2012 and finishes four years later. The safe bet seems to be that we'll be getting a new bridge, rather than a retrofitted one. [Photos via blogdowntown]
· New Design Presented for Bridge [blogdowntown]
· So Long Arches, Hello Cables [Curbed LA]
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