Fort Madison Toll Bridge
The Fort Madison Toll Bridge is a tolled, double-decked swinging truss bridge over the Mississippi River that connects Fort Madison, Iowa, and unincorporated Niota, Illinois. A double-track railway occupies the bridge's lower deck, while two lanes of road traffic are carried on the upper deck. The bridge is about long with a swing span of, and was the longest and largest double-deck swing-span bridge in the world when constructed in 1927. It replaced an inadequate combination roadway/single-track bridge completed in 1887. The main river crossing consists of four Baltimore through truss spans and a swing span of two equal arms, long. In 1999, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places under the title, Fort Madison Bridge, ID number 99001035. It was also documented as survey number IA-62 by the Historic American Engineering Record, archived at the Library of Congress. Construction and photographic details were recorded in the Scientific American magazine.
The bridge is the western terminus of Illinois Route 9, which continues eastwards towards Canton, Illinois, about, and Peoria, about. Iowa Highway 2 formerly reached the bridge from the west. On July 26, 1927, operations were transferred from the original single-track bridge to the current double-track bridge. The first opening for river traffic occurred at 11:58 a.m. on July 26, 1927, for the scow, traveling downriver with no barges attached.
The bridge is privately owned by BNSF Railway and is the river crossing for the Southern Transcon, BNSF's Chicago–Southern California main line. In 2022, between 40 and 100 trains crossed the bridge daily, including Amtrak's Southwest Chief. Amtrak's Atchison, Topeka and [Santa Fe Passenger and Freight Complex Historic District|Fort Madison station] is west of the bridge.
Per Coast Guard regulations and the BNSF Fort Madison River Bridge operations manual, river traffic has the right-of-way over train and vehicle traffic on the bridge. The durations of openings vary depending on weather, river current, size and number of boats, and, occasionally, mechanical problems. A typical opening for a tow with 15 barges lasts 15–20 minutes. The bridge opens over 2,000 times yearly, an average of more than five times daily.