When a machine has operated 24/7 for more than 75 years, it’s going to need a lot of maintenance and upkeep.
That’s certainly true of the John T. Alsop Bridge Downtown, usually referred to as the Main Street Bridge.
It was closed this past Friday from 6:30 p.m. until 8 a.m. Sunday.
The span that allows U.S. 1 to connect the Northbank and Southbank will be closed 6:30 p.m.-6 a.m. today through Thursday and Sept. 18-23, with the exception of Wednesday, Sunday and Sept. 21, when the bridge will be closed 9 p.m.-6 a.m.
The closures are needed to allow the Florida Department of Transportation to sandblast and then paint portions of the bridge, as well as to upgrade some of its operating systems.
The electrical control system is being replaced, along with traffic and sidewalk gates, the lightning protection system and the closed-circuit television cameras that give operators a live view of traffic.
In addition, the control house at the top of the draw span will get new air-conditioning and heating systems, water and sanitary sewer lines and floor tile.
The project, with a budget of $10.7 million, is scheduled to be complete in spring.
The work follows a project completed in May 2015 for $11.2 million to improve the sidewalks along both sides of the bridge and replace the handrails with crash-resistant steel barriers.
That work also included structural maintenance and replacing some of the steel cables that help raise and lower the vertical lift span.
“Some bridges need more love than others,” said Hampton Ray, transportation department spokesman.
The bridge is 1,680 feet long, including the 365-foot vertical lift span, which is the longest on any drawbridge in Florida. It is raised and lowered about 1,400 times a year and more than 30,000 vehicles travel over it each day.
After two years of construction at a cost of $1.5 million, the bridge opened in July 1941. It was named after Alsop, who served as Jacksonville’s mayor from 1923-37 and 1941-45.
It was the second bridge built Downtown, after the St. Elmo W. Acosta Bridge that opened in 1921 as the first automobile crossing over the St. Johns River Downtown.
The original Acosta Bridge was replaced in 1993 with a non-draw span, but that won’t happen with the Main Street Bridge, said Ray.
That’s because in order to build a bridge high enough above the river to allow marine traffic to pass underneath, the ramps to the bridge would have to start in Springfield on the north end and somewhere past San Marco on the south.
As for why the bridge is blue, that’s related to direction-finding and college pride.
Ray said Downtown’s steel bridges used to be painted silver-gray, but about 50 years ago, the state decided to paint each a different color to make it easier for people to identify routes to various parts of the city.
The Isaiah Hart Bridge was painted green, the Main Street blue and the Acosta, a golden-yellow.
Protest erupted over having a blue bridge and another that was so close to orange — a possible nod to the University of Florida — so the John E. Mathews Bridge that connects Downtown with Arlington was painted maroon, close to the garnet shade that represents Florida State University, Ray said.
The Mathews Bridge is named after a former Florida legislator and chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who helped secure funding for the project.
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