The only vehicular bridge over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad between La Grange and Hinsdale -- a onetime wooden footbridge where visitors, patients and staff of Adventist Hinsdale Hospital get to and from 47th Street -- may soon be a vestige of the past.
The circa-1875 one-lane bridge, for which north-south traffic is controlled by a traffic light, first became a bridge for automobile traffic in 1910.
But faced with the fact firetrucks cannot safely travel over the structure and the viaduct over the tracks created by its low 23-foot clearance makes it impossible for some freight
trains to pass, Hinsdale officials are weighing options as to how to update the Oak Street bridge to today's standards.
A $700,000 feasibility study is expected to begin this year to look into options to upgrade the bridge, which could include making it a two-lane, building a bridge in a new location of a tunnel beneath the tracks.
The 110-foot-long, 5-ton capacity bridge was originally erected so people could get across the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad tracks just two years after Hinsdale's incorporation. The structure used today was redesigned in 1947.
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