The North Kansas Avenue Bridge is a four lane, automobile and pedestrian crossing of the Kansas River at Topeka, Kansas, U.S.A. The bridge connects downtown Topeka to North Topeka. It is open to traffic.
The North Kansas Avenue Bridge opened in 1967. It replaced the Melan Arch Bridge, which had collapsed two years prior, killing one motorist. The Melan Arch Bridge opened in 1898 and was the only bridge to North Topeka until 1938.
Unlike the Melan Arch Bridge, the North Topeka side of the North Kansas Avenue Bridge does not connect directly with Kansas Avenue; it instead leads to N.E. Quincy St. This caused traffic to bypass the North Topeka business district on Kansas Avenue, which local merchants claim led to the decline of the business district. A fly-off ramp was built in 2004 to connect the bridge to the Kansas Avenue business district and Great Overland Station.
Famous quotes containing the words north, kansas, avenue and/or bridge:
“When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally—as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing—if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public.... And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speechmaking. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.”
—Paul Simon (b. 1949)