Skip to main content

A Tale of Two Cities and Two Bridges - Durham's Can Opener and Raleigh's Peace Street Bridge

Image
By

Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina.  Two cities - roughly twenty miles apart.  Both are growing, have their own identity, and a little bit of a rivalry.  The major international airport is Raleigh-Durham, but don't tell anyone from Raleigh or Durham that they are the same city.

There are a variety of different yet similar things in both cities.  One example is two separate bridges - both carry trains, eat trucks annually, and are beloved in their unique way.

Raleigh's Peace Street Bridge and Durham's Can Opener Bridge (located at South Gregson at West Peabody) are both low-clearance Norfolk Southern railroad overpasses that for decades have taken out numerous unsuspecting tractor-trailers.  Each bridge resides near their respective city's downtowns - Durham's Brightleaf District and Raleigh's Glenwood South.  Over the years, the two bridges have generated media attention and a social media following.

Durham's Can Opener Bridge:


The bridge opened in 1940 carrying the Southern Railway over Gregson Street.  Today, the tracks remain in operation with Durham's Amtrak Station a few hundred yards to the southeast.  Initially built with a clearance of 11 feet and 8 inches, the Gregson Bridge had a well-known and earned reputation as a truck eater by the late 1960s.

The bridge became a local and later worldwide celebrity in 2008.  A local professional, Jürgen Henn, placed a video camera in his Brightleaf Square office to record traffic.  A few weeks later, he captured his first crash.  A year later, he added a second camera.  A YouTube channel was created - the videos were so successful that Henn created a website documenting the bridge's mishaps.  In addition, you can buy bridge merchandise.

Durham's formerly 11'8" Gregson Street Bridge now has a 12'4" clearance.

It wasn't until 2019 that the Gregson Street Bridge saw clearance improvements.  A $500,000 safety improvement allowed transportation officials to raise the Gregson Street Bridge another eight inches to a 12-foot-4-inch clearance.

Raleigh's Peace Street Bridge:

The Gregson Street Bridge clearance now matches the clearance of the other Triangle truck-scalping bridge, Raleigh's Peace Street Bridge.   The 12'4" low-clearance bridge is the second rail bridge to sit just east of the Glenwood Ave. and Peace St. intersection.  

Raleigh's Peace Street Bridge - the current version has been in place since 1963. (Adam Prince - September 2023)

The first Peace Street Bridge was a basic plate girder design erected in 1948 that carried over the Southern, now Norfolk Southern, Railway at a 12-foot clearance.  That bridge was replaced in 1963 by the current bridge.  When completed clearance was only improved by 4".

Annually since then, the bridge has claimed its share of 18-wheelers, moving trucks, and more.  The bridge is a staple of Raleigh social media - and has its 'own' Twitter account.

Tale of the Tape:

Both bridges are local community iconic landmarks. So how do they measure up against each other?

* - Number calculated from 11foot8 data of 178 trucks over 15 years. 
** - Raleigh Peace Street Bridge merchandise is done by a local clothing company.

Durham's bridge is older, and from its years at a lower clearance has eaten more trucks annually.  However, Peace Street's numbers are from trucks that were physically stuck under the bridge.  The Durham bridge stats count partial shaves and trucks that have been able to get through the underpass.  

The Peace Street Bridge does NOT, to my knowledge, have an active webcam that monitors the bridge and then has any incidents shared online.

In the end, the victory goes to Durham.  The bridge's video documentation and internet presence are far greater than its feisty neighbor down the line in Raleigh.

Further Reading:

Sources & Links:

Where To Find Them:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

By
Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove
1 comment
Read more