Palm Beach County, Florida Bridges: George Bush Blvd. Bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway

December 2012 (26.474 Degrees, -80.062 Degrees) George Bush Blvd. Bridge

Continuing north we arrived at the George Bush Boulevard Bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway. We walked along residential streets trying to reach the bridge without success. I couldn't find any public access to the bridge. I wonder how maintenance crews get to it? Perhaps the lack of access is appropriate for a bridge named after a U.S. president (George Herbert Walker Bush). The former president vacationed in Delray Beach in the 1980s and 1990s.

Since I couldn't take a photo of the substructure, I came back onto the deck and was rewarded with a bridge opening. I was fortunate to see it since it only opens on demand. You can see that the sidewalks overhang steel girders, which are attached to counterweights that lift up each leaf like a teeter-totter.

The George Bush Blvd. Bridge was built in 1949, it's 270 ft long, in satisfactory condition, and carries about 8,000 vehicles a day. It's 35.1 ft wide but only provides 5.9 ft of vertical clearance above the channel. It was closed for five months in 2010 for a rehabilitation and it was closed again in July of 2012 for emergency repairs. They must leave the bascule spans open when the bridge is closed down for repairs because otherwise no one could use the Intracoastal Waterway.

Palm Beach County, Florida Bridges: George Bush Blvd. Bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.