In 2003, Mayor Daley was impressed by the infrastructure he saw in European cities and wanted to achieve something similar with new bridges in Chicago.

Prior to their construction, residents travelled a half mile to the nearest bridge crossing the railroad tracks and Lake Shore Drive to get to the lakefront. The new pedestrian bridges link the recently redeveloped neighborhoods on the west with the lakefront trail and beaches on the east. The bridges are constructed to accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, people with disabilities, and emergency vehicles. To be fully accessible and usable, the bridges have ramps and stairs at both ends. Their design minimizes their footprints within the adjacent parks while integrating accessibility, replacing an outmoded, deteriorated, non-ADA accessible pedestrian bridge.

“For far too long, residents of this community could see the lakefront, but they couldn’t easily reach it,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel at its opening. “This new bridge connects Bronzeville residents to our lakefront and the new 41st street beach….” The bridge brings “more people into the community. There are so many people who thought this community never existed,” said longtime area activist Shirley Newsome, who lives a block from the 41st Street span.“It’s easy to just come outside and walk right across,” said Destiny Brown, 23, who lives in an eight-story building near the bridge.

Adds Blair Kamin, writing in the Chicago Tribune, “And that journey is a delight. In contrast to the 1930s lakefront bridges, whose straight lines made the walk over Lake Shore Drive and the railroad tracks intimidating, the deck’s curves create the perception of shorter — and, thus more manageable — distances. The curves also lead you to wonder, as on a winding street, what’s coming up around the bend. The procession culminates at the curving arches, which are tilted to create openness to the sky.

The arches and their steel cables frame spectacular views of the downtown skyline and the lakefront. Here, the bridge becomes a balcony, a belvedere, a viewing platform. It invites you to pause and ponder, taking a break from the business and busyness of everyday life. It thus becomes an extension of the leisurely landscape of the park, not just a route to it.” “A bridge, it reminds us,” Kamin continues, “can be much more than a way to get from point A to point B. It can invite shifts in the fate of neighborhoods, in our patterns of movement, and even perhaps in our region’s longstanding divisions of race and class.”

The bridges promote sustainable practices by encouraging non-vehicular activities such as bicycling and walking. They are constructed to accommodate pedestrians, bicyclists, people with disabilities, and emergency vehicles. They allow those using wheelchairs and strollers to reach the lakefront and its parks. In this way, they are sustainability “multipliers” that encourage sustainable lifestyles, by making it easier and more enjoyable for to access the lakefront and other parts of Chicago via the lakefront pathways, without using motor vehicles.

Designed primarily of widely available, highly durable, recycled and recyclable materials such as steel, stainless steel, and high albedo concrete, they can be repaired as needed and then recycled at the end of what is projected to be more than a century of useful life.

General illumination is provided by high efficiency LED light fixtures.

Stormwater is routed off the bridges and flows overland through vegetated strips, then enters shallow basins consisting of a prepared planting bed with organic mulch and woody and herbaceous plant species. Here water is detained, passing slowly through the soil medium. The substrate and its microbial action filter and break down or assimilate pollutants. The natural physical and biological processes of the basins enhance water quality as the water infiltrates through it.

Since their completion, the bridges have become not only a convenient way for citizens to access the lakefront and to reach the city from the lakefront, but also one of the most popular destinations as a lakefront promenade, invigorating bike path, and gathering places for all social and economic groups. These bridges create equity by linking the long isolated communities to the lakefront.