Copyright berkshireeagle
GREAT BARRINGTON If 1995’s “Bridges of Madison County” were filmed here in the Berkshires there’s a good chance Meryl would still be waiting for Clint 30 years later given the deplorable state of our bridges. According to the latest State of Repair for Bridges in Berkshire County report, 81 of our county’s nearly 750 bridges are either closed or have weight restrictions because they’re falling apart. That means thousands of drivers in Adams, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Sheffield, Stockbridge, Washington and Lee are now forced to drive miles out of their way just for the privilege of making it to the other side. A bridge too far The 30 or so extra minutes my detours cost each day give me 10 hours a week to think about how much extra mileage, wear and tear, and undue stress I’m putting on my car — and my nervous system. Maybe we should go back to the way they used to do it — find where the river was shallowest, wait for low water conditions, then drive your wagon and livestock to the other shore. I bet they still got there faster than it takes me. And I don’t have livestock. Madison County’s bridges apparently aren’t doing too well, either. Of the 19 covered bridges featured in the film, only six are left. And only one is usable. Berkshire County proudly boasts a covered bridge of its own, which, of course, is out of commission. Ours has the added value of being a certified UFO visitation site. It was even memorialized by then-Gov. Charlie Baker in 2015 with a citation recognizing what happened there as a “historically significant off-world incident.” The Berkshire UFO incident, according to lore, took place in Sheffield when the Reed family claims they were taken from their car and lifted to an airplane hangar where “insect-like”creatures were working. I don’t know what to make of this but it’s a fair bet they weren’t here for our bridge technology. A span to span years I’ve never tried replacing a bridge but it doesn’t look easy. It’s estimated that replacing Great Barrington’s Brookside Bridge, for example, which gave up the ghost a year and a half ago, will cost about $50 million and take up to a decade before it’s ready. It turns out, however, that for the low, low price of only $3 million, you can get a perfectly good temporary bridge up and running in less than a year. So, on May 3, 2025, the town voted overwhelmingly to fund one. Six months later, nothing has begun. When will they start? I suppose they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. For now, I’ll continue wasting time and gas hoping that somewhere between budgets, bids and bureaucracy, we rediscover the will to build again. Bridges aren’t just concrete and steel — they’re the literal connections that hold a community together. When we let them crumble, a little bit of the county crumbles with them. Maybe by the time the Brookside Bridge and others like it reopen, we’ll have invented teleportation, or a portal that delivers me right into town. Until then, I’ll keep crossing my fingers instead of the Housatonic.
