Pedestrian Bridges: Oakland

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

The Oakland neighborhoods in Pittsburgh’s East End are the home to a number of institutions. Among them are Carlow College, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), multiple UPMC hospitals, the Phipps Conservatory (Phipps), the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children, and the Carnegie Institute complex (housing the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the main Carnegie Library, and the Carnegie Music Hall). Institutions seem to have a predilection for pedestrian bridges and the ones in Oakland are no exception.

My first encounter with an elevated, enclosed pedestrian bridge was one of the ones in the UPMC hospital complex. The summer I turned six, my grandfather was admitted to the hospital and our trip to Pittsburgh to visit him included many impressionable firsts for me:

First time in a hospital
First time to walk across an enclosed, elevated pedestrian bridge
First time to encounter trick candles on a birthday cake

While I can now appreciate the importance of an enclosed pedestrian bridge to transport patients between facilities in a hospital without having to expose them to the unregulated outside air, I found it an odd and foreign structure when I was six. Decades later, outside of the use for hospital patients, I still find enclosed pedestrian bridges to be odd and foreign. I much prefer getting a breath of fresh air (even if it’s below freezing) to the often stale, manufactured air of these bridges.

Pittsburgh’s Underpass Mural

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

Pittsburgh has been redding up for the NFL Draft with increasing fervor over the last several weeks. Among the actions taken was painting a series of railroad trestles that pass over a number of streets downtown. I was prepared to say, “how cool, but why couldn’t we spruce up the pedestrian experience with these trestles while we’re at it?”

However, gearing up to make that compliant, I finally noticed that two of them already have murals, despite my rant a few months ago about the lack of murals to spruce up the pedestrian experience when passing underneath railroad bridges in Pittsburgh compared to other cities. One takes it a step further and also has a series of lights strung over the sidewalk. I don’t know how long the mural or the lights have been in place, but my reaction to the mural this week was “oh yeah, I forgot this was there.”

In my defense, the third of the newly painted trestles I explored this week is the longest and darkest of these three, and the one I’ve walked under the most. It is also one of the top three I pictured when making my compliant in February. The other two being the one where this same railroad crosses over Merchant Street on the North Side and the one carrying the T tracks over First Avenue on the opposite side of downtown. I still maintain that these would benefit from the addition of a mural or other intervention.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the approach to our new black & gold trestles.

Williamsport Public Art

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

I enjoy my layovers in Williamsport, PA, even though I introduced the town on my blog with my least favorite experience there so far – walking its bridges. I am always on the tail end of a trip when I’m visit, which may explain why I have a tendency to not take as many photographs as I otherwise would. For example, the Little League Museum is in Williamsport and at one intersection the public art reflects this with a statue at each corner of little leagues players one each at home plate and the three bases. When I stumbled across that intersection I was too tired to hit all four corners and so I didn’t even take photographs of the statues at the two corners I did pass. However, the crochet-filled penny-farthing bike rack and a couple murals filling in the normally blank walls along parking lots were inspiring enough for me to stop for a minute to take photos, despite being so tired.

Williamsport Bridges

Posted on April 12, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

Williamsport is a town of just over 25,000 along the upper Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. I discovered it as an excellent stop-over point to break up the drive home from my relatives in Rutland (where I’ve explored public art, a bridge, covered bridges, and the drawing of municipal boundaries). I enjoy a historic hotel, good restaurants, and a great bookstore (particularly useful when I’ve run out of reading on a trip) whenever I stop in Williamsport.

On a recent trip, I decided to walk the Market Street and Maryland Street Bridges over the Susquehanna while I was there. I took the walk in the morning, leaving my hotel shortly before 8:00 AM, so that I’d be back before checkout time. The sun was already high enough in the sky to be uncomfortably warm and there was very little relief from shade over the bridges and along the river. I spent most of the walk looking forward to when it would be over. A nice riverside trail connected the two bridges. I walked the southern route and frequently wished that the trees came closer to the trail to provide some relief from the sun. As such, I did not take the time to stop and read the informational signs about the region’s history in lumbering or about the birds that might be seen along the river.

George Mason Memorial Bridge + Others

Posted on February 15, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

After cataloguing the photos from my April 2025 bridge walking in Washington, DC,¹ I revisited the photos from my prior trips to the city and was surprised to find this wasn’t the first time I had walked a bridge across the Potomac River.

In May 2012, weeks after I had launched my bridge-walking career in London and days before I launched this blog, I was in Washington, DC, visiting my uncle. Based on my photos, I believe we rode the Metro and got off at the Crystal City stop. From there, we walked the Mount Vernon Trail passing over National Avenue/Smith Blvd by bridge and passing under the Long Bridge, Charles R. Fenwick Bridge, Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge, 14th Street Bridge, and George Mason Memorial Bridge. We finished our bridge exploring by walking across the Potomac River on the George Mason Memorial Bridge.

Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, Frederick Douglass Bridge, Anacostia River Canals, and C&O Canal ↩︎

Washington, DC, Mural

Posted on February 8, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

On Day 2 of my April 2025 Washington, DC, trip, I needed to take it easy. However, I couldn’t sit inside all day. On a short excursion near Union Station, I got uncomfortable as I approached the underbelly of the railroad bridge over K Street. My experience of similar structures in Pittsburgh is that they are dark, dirty, untended, and creepy. Bird droppings or bridge droppings are likely to land on you at any point.

The underbelly of this bridge over K Street defied my expectations. A light mural created a welcoming and engaging experience that felt more like Buffalo’s Seneca One murals than the underbelly of Pittsburgh’s railroad bridges. Because light was used instead of paint, it lit up a dark place and incorporated engaging animation:

Gateway Park, Arlington

Posted on January 24, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

While walking from the Rosslyn Metro Station to the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, we walked over a surprise bridge. If we had chosen to walk over on the upriver side of the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, I may have completely missed that we walked a bridge over I-66.

Gateway Park is a “cap” over the freeway and is both a park and a bridge. Unlike Pittsburgh’s CAP or Frankie Pace Park, Gateway Park was built in the 1980s at the same time as the freeway it covers. It also distinguishes itself from Pittsburgh’s park/bridge by appearing to be fully integrated with the surrounding city and having well-utilized programming.

C&O Canal Bridge, Georgetown

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Carolyn Ristau

I couldn’t resist the temptation to walk across the C&O Canal, or what’s left of it. The climb down to this bridge from Georgetown and the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge included a very steep street and then some steps. Yet, this bridge is still significantly above the level of the river, approximately in line with the elevated freeway of Rt. 29.

After walking the downward slope across this bridge and its ramp to the towpath level, we had to walk down a set of stairs to reach the level of the Georgetown Waterfront Park. As the sidewalk on Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge is more than 60 ft above the water, the hike from the bridge to the waterfront park across the C&O Canal bridge is similar to climbing down and then up the stairs in a 6-7 story building.

There was an interesting mural along the stairs, and the park itself was beautiful, but the need to conserve my energy at this point limited the photos I took to the most important (the views of the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge and the underside of the elevated freeway shared in the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge post).

Frederick Douglass Bridge, DC

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

For years, even before I started urbantraipsing, I thought nothing of walking from transit stop to transit stop, bridge to bridge, as I explore and encounter the expected and unexpected nooks and crannies of a city. That way of life came crashing to a devastating halt in the fall of 2023 when I developed Long COVID.

Six months passed.

And then a year.

The return to “normal” my doctors promised seemed increasingly unlikely. But a return to functional seemed within reach. The question remained: did urbantraipsing fall within this new functionality?

After a few local test excursions, I felt physically and mentally strong enough to test travel. In April 2025, I took a long-overdue trip to visit my brother in Washington, DC. On this trip, I encountered some great bridges and learned that, much like other activities, with modification and accommodation urbantraipsing is a way of life I can continue.

The open, through-arch Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge was one of our expected encounters. I probably would have been ecstatic about the unexpected benches in the lookouts between the arches under previous circumstances. After all, it isn’t every day that you find a bench on a bridge. However, in the past, I probably would have just said “that’s cool,” photographed them, and moved on. Instead, I took full advantage of these seats for one of my rest and rehydration breaks. This slow down is the reason I spotted the Yard Park Bridge, a bridge I definitely needed to add to my collection.

Perhaps slowing down and being more intentional to accommodate my Long COVID needs will continue to add depth to my urbantraipsing experiences.

Anacostia River Canals

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Carolyn Ristau

The Anacostia Riverwalk Trail crosses over the openings of several canal channels within a short distance from the Frederick Douglass Bridge in Washington, DC. The first canal opening that I walked over, I had no idea that I was walking on a bridge…like when I walked over the Grosvenor Canal in London. It wasn’t until I was checking out the views from the Frederick Douglass Bridge that I saw the opening for the canal underneath the path I had just walked. (First picture in the slide show below.)

The bridge pictured above appears to have been over a canal that fed into or out of (or both?) the old O Street Pumping Station. This bridge was clearly visible as we walked passed it on our way to the Frederick Douglass. I was tempted to cross it (as a bridge walker, it is hard to walk passed a bridge and not over it), but I was tired and trying to conserve energy. However, once on the Frederick Douglass Bridge, I spotted another pedestrian bridge just beyond this one that I could not pass up the opportunity to walk, no matter how tired I was.

The Yard Park Bridge is a highly photogenic bridge, perhaps rivalling London’s Millennium Bridge. It crosses over what I think are the remnants of the Washington City Canal, most of which has been paved over. The paved portion visible from the Yard Park Bridge reminded me of the portions of the Erie Canal in Buffalo paved over for a skating rink and other recreational purposes.