Biking is big in Portland. According to Wikipedia, “Portland has earned multiple ‘bicycle friendly city’ awards, including being awarded platinum status by the League of American Bicyclists. Portland also has the highest rate of bicycle commuting to work of any major American city with 4.2% of workers commuting to work by bicycle in 2006.”
Bridges are also big in Portland. With 10 highway bridges crossing the Willamette River in the downtown area and several more north and south of downtown, one of the city’s nicknames is “Bridgetown.” Many of them are vertical lift draw bridges, where a span of the bridge is raised flat, like an elevator, rather than at an angle. The imaginatively named Steel Bridge carries automobile, bicycle, and light rail traffic on its upper level and railroad and pedestrian traffic on its lower level. The two decks can be raised and lowered independently, so the lower deck can be raised to allow river traffic to pass while not disturbing the flow of traffic on the upper deck.
If you take an Amtrak train to Portland from the south, you’ll cross Steel Bridge on the lower level just before you pull into the station. That’s exactly what I did the day I took this shot, captured from a train window while waiting in Union Station. It was on Amtrak Cascades around 7 am, so bicycle commuter traffic was just starting to cross the bridge to downtown. Light was low, especially under the bridge, so the colors and details in the original shot were murky. That’s why I reduced it to high contrast black and white. I hope you like the result! xox
PS Prints available at my print site.
