Talk:Walkway over the Hudson

Untitled

This article did not seem to exist yet near as I could tell although it had multiple red links (over 20!). Since I am a railfan, and since I lived in the area for 10 years, it seemed fitting. I fetched an image from the Library of Congress to use for it. Should I have cropped that image to remove the HAER indexing and so forth??? Comments are very welcome, I am only an egg at article creation. ++Lar 03:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

switch lead image?

this image, also from HAER, is much more dramatic, maybe it should be switched. I will do it next time I work on this article barring any objection. (note, there are also good shots of the central third beam/girder/support system that probably should be added) ++Lar: t/c 13:25, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Very nice article. Thank you for your wonderful contribution. I have one relatively minor comment or question. I interpret the sentence from the article quoted below to mean that the bridge was the largest span across the Hudson until the Bear Mountain Bridge was built, although I don't know that for a fact. However, if the reader didn't know that the Bear Mountain Bridge is a highway bridge and the Poughkeepsie Bridge was exclusively a railroad bridge he/she might think that either the Bear Mountain Bridge became an alternate route for trains or that it reduced automobile congestion on the Poughkeepsie Bridge. Indeed didn't the Poughkeepsie Bridge continue to be the main crossing of the Hudson for trains even after the Bear Mountain Bridge was built?

"The bridge remained as the main Hudson River crossing south of Albany until the construction of the Bear Mountain Bridge in 1924, and was advertised as a way to avoid New York City congestion (see the Poughkeepsie Bridge Route article for more information). " Hochstein (talk) 23:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

longest?

Toward the bottom of this article appears the following claim (made in the Hudson Valley Press article at this url which is erroneous):

Upon the restoration completion, the bridge will become the longest elevated public park in the world. (sic)

However, in looking at other elevated parks around the world it appears this claim does not hold up. In fact, Poughkeepsie Bridge does not even appear to be the longest elevated public park within the state of New York, much less around the world. Here is a table of elevated park lengths from around the world with length figures drawn from the linked wikipedia articles:

elevated park	length	elevation	location	comment
Great Wall of China	6,400 to 8,852 kilometres (3,977 to 5,500 mi)	5 to 8 metres (16 to 26 ft)	northern China	ancient fortification. 980 metres (3,220 ft) above sea level at highest point at Jinshanling
Blue Ridge Parkway	755 kilometres (469 mi)		Virginia and North Carolina	20th century roadway along mountain ridges. 1,845 metres (6,053 ft) AMSL on Richland Balsam Mountain at Milepost 431.
Limes Germanicus	568 kilometres (353 mi)		Germany	ancient Roman fortification
Zasechnaya cherta	hundreds of kilometres		Russia	title refers to several defensive lines
Cheolli Jangseong	500 kilometres (310 mi) (1000 li)		North Korea and China (two walls)	ancient fortifications
Offa's Dyke	190 kilometres (120 mi)	2.5 metres (8.2 ft) (max.)	western England, eastern Wales	ancient border dyke and moat
Great Wall of Gorgan	155 kilometres (96 mi)		Gorgan, Golestan, Iran	ancient Parthian or Sassinid fortification
Hadrian's Wall Path	134.5 kilometres (83.6 mi)		northern England, southern Scotland	ancient fortification
Antonine Wall	63 kilometres (39 mi)		central Scotland	ancient fortification
Trajan's Walls	61 kilometres (38 mi) (little earth); 54 kilometres (34 mi) (large earth); 59 kilometres (37 mi) (stone)		Romania, Moldova, Ukraine	medieval Byzantine fortifications popularly misnamed after Roman emporer
Anastasian Wall	56 kilometres (35 mi)		west of Istanbul, Turkey	ancient Byzantine fortification
Silesia Walls	30 kilometres (19 mi)		Poland	may have been to reduce smuggling instead of military use
Danevirke	30 kilometres (19 mi)		Danish fortification in Northern Germany, Schleswig-Holstein	used from 808 to 1864 for military purposes
Atlantic City boardwalk	6.63 to 9.25 kilometres (4.12 to 5.75 mi) (longer figure incudes Ventnor City's boardwalk)	0.1 metres (0.33 ft) (approximate negligible height)	Atlantic City, New Jersey	beach boardwalk small elevation above sand. Claimed to be world's longest boardwalk.
Walls of Constantinople	5.630 kilometres (3.498 mi) (Theodosian)		Istanbul, Turkey
Promenade plantée	4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi)		Paris, France	19th century elevated rail line
Bloomingdale Line	4.3 kilometres (2.7 mi)		Chicago, Illinois	abandoned rail line that is proposed to be but is not yet a park
Congaree National Park	3.9 kilometres (2.4 mi)		Richland County, South Carolina	boardwalk loop over wetlands
City wall of Visby	3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi)		Visby, Gotland, Sweden	medieval fortification largely intact
Hornibrook Bridge	2.684 kilometres (1.668 mi)		Bramble Bay, Queensland, Australia	Former road bridge converted to pedestrian bridge 1979. Pedestrian access closed on 14 July 2010. Demolition expected 2011.
Humber Bridge	2.220 kilometres (1.379 mi)	30 metres (98 ft)[1]	Barton upon Humber to Hessle, England	two sidewalks
Golden Gate Bridge	2.737 kilometres (1.701 mi)	67 metres (220 ft)	San Francisco, California to Marin headlands	sidewalk is 75 metres (246 ft) above water
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge	2.2 kilometres (1.4 mi) (anchor to anchor) 4.3 kilometres (2.7 mi) (overall)	69.5 metres (228 ft)	Brooklyn to Staten Island	not a park, no sidewalk. Used once yearly for marathon start pedestrian traffic
Southend Pier	2.158 kilometres (1.341 mi)	a few metres (varies with tide)	Southend-on-Sea, England	Claimed to be the longest pleasure pier in the world.
Poughkeepsie Bridge	6,767 feet (2082.15 meters)	212 feet (65.23 meters)	Poughkeepsie, New York to Highland, New York	abandoned railway bridge to open as a New York State Park on October 3, 2009
High Line (New York City)	1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi)		Manhattan, New York, New York	former elevated rail line was 2.33 kilometres (1.45 mi), but the park is not as long second section of park opened 7–8 June 2011 (see Talk:High Line (New York City)#length of the park)
Reading Viaduct	1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi)		Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	10 block long abandoned elevated railway. Property still owned by the Reading Company and not a park.
George Washington Bridge	1.450 kilometres (0.901 mi)	65 metres (213 ft)	New York to Fort Lee	primarily a motor vehicle bridge, sidewalk carries pedestrians and cyclists from Fort Washington and Riverside Parks to Fort Lee Historic park
Harsimus Stem Embankment	0.8 kilometres (0.50 mi)		Jersey City, New Jersey	6 block long former elevated line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is not a park as of 2009.
Kinzua Bridge	0.625 kilometres (0.388 mi) (before collapse)	92 metres (302 ft) (before collapse)	McKean County, Pennsylvania	abandoned railway bridge, mostly destroyed by tornado in 2003. Part of Kinzua Bridge State Park.

How about removing or rewriting the claim? 69.119.27.73 (talk) 22:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It appears this is one of those instances where a published source has it wrong. While I'm not so sure that the Great Wall of China or old fortifications should be described as an "elevated park", certainly the High Line in Manhattan and the Paris promenade are longer. I agree that the claim should either be removed, or reworded to say, "Called the longest elevated park by the Hudson Valley Press, it is exceeded in length by the 2.8 mi. Promenade plantee in Paris and others". Maybe this is the highest elevated park (if a source can be found that says so)?  JGHowes  ^talk 19:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I have expanded the comparison table with a few more entries, some of which (but not all) may be considered "elevated public parks". Unfortunately, the most often published figure for the "elevation" of a bridge is usually the minimum navigable space, e.g. "height of lowest frame above average high tide" or something similar. Such figures may differ from the height of the pedestrian way (note especially the comment for the Golden Gate Bridge as well as the summer time sag for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge). I have not found a reference that makes the claim that the Poughkeepsie Bridge will be the highest when it opens as a park in October, but I also doubt that claim could be accurately made. I am in favor of removing the claim made in the article and not weaseling out by explicitly pointing out that the claim is made by the external Hudson Valley Press. 69.119.27.73 (talk) 00:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and removed the claim transcribed from the Hudson Valley Press. 69.119.27.73 (talk) 13:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a useful list, a shame to bury it in a talk page... can it be made a list in its own right? (list of what, though :) ??? ) ++Lar: t/c 02:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Steel Formulation

The article mentions that the bridge is built of mild steel that is "60%-70% carbon". This can't possibly be correct, as about 1.5% carbon is the upper limit for steel, before it is considered cast or wrought iron. I'd say somebody missed a decimal place, so I'm putting one in. Kalmbach (talk) 15:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Overlapping coordinates

There are two overlapping copies of the location coordinates in the upper right corner of the article, probably put there by multiple infobox templates. Is there any way to prevent this? *Dan T.* (talk) 03:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I chose to remove the data from the bridge infobox (because the nrhp infobox is using those data to place a pushpin in the map of New York State). Now the bridge infobox is missing its coordinates entry, but the title of the article display the data. The problem also appeared on the Bear Mountain Bridge article and was fixed in the same way there. 24.44.14.186 (talk) 03:53, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Donald Pevsner?

Is anybody else concerned about the number of mentions of Don Pevsner in the article, which has many edits by User:DonPevsner (talk)? JGHowes has corresponded with him about WP:V, and yet footnote 13 is clearly not verifiable by anybody but the two people privy to the conversation, one of whom is Don. RussNelson (talk) 22:28, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Metric conversions

The metric equivalents for distances are implausibly accurate, with one foot of precision translated to 1 cm precision. They should be reviewed by a human who knows the how accurate the original figures are. For example, height above water probably isn't constant to within 1 foot. As a starting point, rounding the metric distances to the nearest meter would improve the article.Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:07, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I just changed the units to the "convert" template, rather than text. Does this help?--Triskele Jim (talk) 16:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

It isn't level. Slopes down from Highland to Poughkeepsie. A bit of a problem, because if an engineer came onto the bridge hot, he had to keep his speed until the last car cleared the bridge. If you brake on a bridge, you can shift it, and that would be very very bad. Very bad. Especially for the people living underneath it. RussNelson (talk) 14:51, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Dimensions

Can anyone find an accurate width for the bridge? The article formerly said the bridge was 4 feet 8.5 inches wide, but that would be impossible since it was built to carry 2 standard gauge rail lines originally and could have trains on each track simultaneously. The bridge would need to be at least 15 feet wide to fit that, and from the looks of the photos is wider than that 76.116.1.210 (talk) 14:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found the true width in http://atfiles.org/files/pdf/WalkwayOverHudson.pdf 76.116.1.210 (talk) 14:51, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Nice catch. Thanks for fixing it. Acps110 ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Somebody set "width" to the width (gauge) of the tracks. There's a Flickr group for pictures of the bridge before it became the walkway. http://www.flickr.com/groups/pk_rr_bridge/ RussNelson (talk) 22:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Article naming

There appears to be some back and forth editing of two editors over this page and what the bridge should actually be called. Though I was not one of those editors, I would recommend renaming the page to "Walkway over the Hudson", and using that as the official/current name on this page. My reasoning is that it is what the bridge is currently known as, and is by far the most likely name that people would search for the bridge for. Any thoughts or opinions one way or another? Caidh (talk) 21:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Article updated. - Denimadept (talk) 21:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Just adding an "AKA" isn't really what I mean. I mean renaming the entire page to "Walkway over the Hudson" and making that the primary name used in the page except when discussing historical sections. I don't want to make such a change without at least raising the issue here first though.Caidh (talk) 22:22, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

That, I can't say. I don't know the crossing personally. We'll have to wait for someone else to chime in. - Denimadept (talk) 22:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Article should be called "The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge" this is nonsense. The bridge has existed as "The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge" for over one hundred and thirty years, it has a huge footprint in American railroad history, railroadiana and archived historic records. If you showed a photo of it to a million people, each of them would look at it and say "That's a bridge". Further, searching for information by that title ("Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge")is much more common than anyone looking for a walkway article. I understand some publicity-minded folks may feel it helps raise awareness to the tourist walkway OVER the bridge, - that's commendable - however the object, the construct in question is and has always been called "The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge" as titled by the people of the City of Poughkeepsie and "The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge" company now back in something like antiquity. See the trend there?

Rename this article please and KEEP it properly named "The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.25.15 (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Just because it was called that in the past, doesn't mean it is called that now. We don't still refer to New York as New Netherlands. Please point to a modern and reliable source that refers to this as the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge - and contrast that with the vast amount of information pointing to the new name. The bridge has had millions of visitors to it where the only name shown is the "Walkway over the Hudson". It hasn't had any other use in over fourty years. For more information, see the Wikipedia Naming Conventions article, specifically where it states the "Common name" should be used. The name "Walkway over the Hudson" meets the Recognizability and Naturalness characteristics where the name "Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge" certainly would not. Caidh (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Additionally New York State officially calls this the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park [2].

The "common name" in Poughkeepsie and among worldwide railroad professionals and enthusiasts still call this the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge. Also, numerous new nautical maps still refer to it as the PRB. ALso cite these "millions" of people who visit a park.

The bridge is just that. Call it apark or whatever however the railroad bridge is still a railroad bridge.. re purposed or not. How stupid are you people? Marketing should be kept off Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.31.217 (talk) 21:32, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified

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Walkway Over the Hudson - debate over the longest pedestrian footbridge in the world.

An editor just changed, in fourth paragraph of introduction, that WOTH is the longest pedestrian footbridge in the world while the Mile Into the Wild in Keensburg, Colorado is second. This is not correct, Mile Into the Wild Walkway is 1.51 miles long, according to their website. The source that it is going to (reference#7) is from May 29, 2012, so it is outdated and very old. Mile Into the Wild has held this title since late 2016, if someone can reference the Guinness World Records specifing this record and their website (Mile Into the Wild) specifying this, please do. Should be changed, need an updated source, within last year.2601:581:8000:21B0:85EC:D496:63F5:ABF (talk) 20:08, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

COI

I mentioned this in my edit summary, but this article is largely written by the very Donald L. Pevsner that is mentioned in the text. It likely needs a rewrite from someone not connected to the subject. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:45, 29 August 2022 (UTC)