You've been waiting and waiting for it. Whoever's responsible for it tells you to wait "just a little longer". A New York minute, a Biblical day, or a geologic era (or error)? "Just a little more time," you're told:
That's what the Department of Transportation has been telling us ever since the early Jurassic period, when Randall's Island was formed. They've been promising a bicycle-pedestrian bridge from the Island to the Bronx. A posted sign said the bridge would be done in the Fall of 2013. Then a digit was changed. Then another. Then the season. What's an ice age or two when you're waiting for something you can really use, right?
To be fair, it is indeed possible to use the pedestrian walkway on the Bronx spur of the RFK-Triborough Bridge. That path is steeply inclined--which I don't mind, as I can use the climbing practice. But it also zigs and zags, which makes for very poor sight lines. I am amazed that there aren't more accidents, especially involving cyclists, skaters or skateboarders coming from the Bronx to the Island, i.e. going down the slalom.
The bridge that's been in the works ever since the Randall's Island Salamander first crawled out of the Bronx Kill would, at least, give clearer sightlines, not to mention make it easier to pedal to and from the Bronx:
What's that I saw today? People actually working on the bridge? And could it be that they've actually laid something like a foundation for the path over the rows of pipes and girders that have lain across the creek ever since, oh, about the time Laurasia broke apart.
Could it be that we'll actually have the bridge before the cash bundles from Manhattan collide with empty lots in the Bronx and give rise to condominium and office towers?
Could it actually open during--dare I say it--our lifetimes? Or maybe an evolutionary period or two later?
One can only hope.
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