For most of my life, longer than I care to admit, I passed over the Narrows Bridge occasionally, thinking no more about why it was built than “to get to the other side”.
Shortly after starting a job in Tacoma, the little light bulb came on- when Galloping Gertie was built, there was no “other side”. Even today you can plainly see that Tacoma is a sparsely settled suburban city, and the architectural styles make it plain that in the 30s there were miles of open countryside between downtown Tacoma and the Narrows.
The bridge could not possibly have been built to support the suburbanization of Port Orchard and Gig Harbor- even in the 50s these areas were almost entirely rural and no building to speak of was happening there. The only industries on the Kitsap Penninsula are naval bases, and you don’t normally load parts of ships on a truck to ship them to another port.
In short, Galloping Gertie was built because the Narrows are narrow, and the bluffs are high, allowing the construction of a suspension bridge high enough to allow ships to pass underneath. It truly was built to “get to the other side” with no regard for the fact that there was nothing there.
Flash forward 60 years. Again, the highway department is building a Narrows bridge. Public opinion on the west side is overwhelmingly opposed to the new bridge, in spite of the highway department using their best efforts to create congestion and make the public demand more roads.
And build it they did, just in time to exacerbate global warming by encouraging sprawl, and to mulct the bridge users for the benefit of a private company that owns any profits, but lets the state keep all the losses.
There’s a lesson in there someplace. Or at least something to chat about if you ever drive over the new bridge. Which you probably won’t, because it’s still not a very good way to get to where you want to go.
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