After the P-D Posse’s experience on the McKinley Bridge last Sunday, with vehicles and equipment parked in the bike lane and work continuing to prepare the bridge for vehicular traffic, 10 Speed wondered what it would be like on the bridge during a weekday with more construction workers on duty.

10 Speed reader Steve Burch of St. Louis came back from a ride Tuesday with a cautionary tale.  He  started downtown, rode the Riverfront Trail,  crossed into Illinois on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, then traveled south through Granite City and Venice, only to find the McKinley Bridge busy  with a beehive of construction activity.

Workers on the road leading to the bridge  advised Burch that it probably wasn’t safe to cross, and Burch had only two options: Go across anyway, or venture down Route 3 to the Eads Bridge.  A contruction worker offered a third option, with Burch took: A ride  in  a pickup across the bridge so he could access the Riverfront Trail.

“The whole way across there was a ton of construction in progress with the road blocked on both sides,” Burch wrote in an e-mail. “I’m a pretty streetwise rider (lots of time spent on metro streets) and I would have been intimidated by all of the activity on the bridge. I can’t imagine what a novice would have done.”

Officials have said the bridge is open to bicycles and pedestrians, but the remaining construction makes it a dicey proposition at best for cyclists and pedestrians.

If you really, really, really  want to ride over the bridge and don’t want to wait, ride a counter-clockwise circuit from downtown  and cross the McKinley first. That way, if you see it might not be  safe, you can turn back and return to the Riverfront Trail in short order.  

Once the work is completely done, and the bicycle access routes complete, the addition to the trail system will be awesome. Until then, be very careful.

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