Allan Appel Photo
The long line on Front Street, with the raised spans of Ferry Street Bridge in the background.
Margaret Stevenson still had a smile on her face even though she and her black Nissan Altima had been waiting ten minutes in unusual bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along Front Street at around 5:20 p.m. to cross the Q River at the Grand Avenue Bridge
That was the scene Wednesday of rush-hour travail resulting from the week-long closing of the Ferry Street Bridge for electrical upgrades. The line-up of cars was visible as far as the eye could see.
Stevenson (pictured) was inside the fourth car from the Grand Avenue and Front Street intersection. Behind her cars stretched along the park and up the curving street all the way to Brewery Square, and likely beyond.
Stevenson’s passenger had heard about the closing and the need to find alternate routes via announcements on WTNH TV.
Click here for the story of the joyous reopening of the Ferry Street Bridge back in 2008. At the time it had been closed six long years for repairs.
The city has said the electrical upgrade work will be complete this weekend, with the bridge scheduled to be in working order on Monday.
Front Street to the Grand Avenue Bridge was the alternate route Stevenson, who lives on Summit Street in Fair Haven Heights, had been taking for the past three days.
She was still smiling, although her passenger was not.
Meanwhile Patricia McGloine (pictured), who lives on Rock Hill Rod, a little spur off of Lexington Avenue, walked across the intersection on her way home. No waiting in line for this pedestrian.
She stopped to say that in all her years in the neighborhood she hadn’t seen cars this jammed up. She noted that traffic on the other side of the river was also clogged all along Quinnipiac Avenue.
Meanwhile, the light changed and Stevenson’s Altima inched toward the corner and the turn to cross the Grand Avenue Bridge.
Just when she neared, the alarms clanged and the red lights flashed.
Ferry Street Bridge closing or not, the Grand Avenue Bridge opens when a boat needs to pass, and at 5:34, approximately, one did.
When a reporter returned to her car — after all it would be five more minutes before the bridge swiveled open and then swiveled back closed again — Stevenson was still smiling. What was the alternative?
However, she had a made decision: Tomorrow she would avoid Front Street and the Grand Avenue Bridge and hope for better luck crossing the river at the Tomlinson Avenue Bridge.
Bring back the Ferry!