The myth of the inexorable

Posted 5/22/12

Up until last week, the replacement of the Pond Eddy Bridge seemed like an unstoppable juggernaut, regardless of the absurdity of replacing a historic landmark connecting a tiny rural hamlet to a …

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The myth of the inexorable

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Up until last week, the replacement of the Pond Eddy Bridge seemed like an unstoppable juggernaut, regardless of the absurdity of replacing a historic landmark connecting a tiny rural hamlet to a settlement of a couple of dozen people with a $10-12 million, 40-ton structure suitable for an urban artery.

Overnight, that changed. New York State Department of Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald sent a letter to the Interstate Bridge Commission requesting that the fate of the bridge be reviewed to see if historic preservation money can be found to modernize it rather than replace it, along with a review of the nine other bridges under the commission’s jurisdiction. True, the commission effectively ignored the letter at last week’s meeting, voting to proceed with its full slate of capital projects. But New York State funding is not in place for Pond Eddy Bridge replacement, leaving it in limbo.

We were unable, as of press time, to find out exactly what that means going forward—e.g. whether anyone is going to undertake the suggested review, and even if restoration money is available, whether new engineering studies would have to be done regarding the feasibility of restoration. But it certainly seems that the bridge has received, at the very least, an 11th-hour reprieve.

What got us that reprieve is a group of dedicated advocates who simply would not give up no matter how inevitable demolition seemed. The Pond Eddy Bridge is, in fact, yet another lesson in the “Overton window,” which we have discussed on these pages before: how simply talking about something persistently enough can, over time, shift perception so that a policy once seen as radical or impossible becomes viewed as sensible and even advisable—or vice versa.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the people of Pond Eddy have real needs that must be met. Nobody denies that the current bridge is in precarious shape, meaning delay could be dangerous. There is more than one side to this issue, and the idea that it is worthwhile to keep fighting even when opposition seems inexorable has a less attractive flipside; it is also possible to lose even when victory seems assured.

But what has inspired us most about this latest development is less the specifics of the issue, than the reminder that the world is a big and mysterious place that still has the capacity to surprise; that reality is not bounded by the limitations of our belief systems; and that we can’t let our assumptions about winning, or losing, determine how hard we try.

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