Omaha – Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge (and welcome to Iowa)

This pedestrian bridge is 3,000 feet long and was formally opened on 28 September 2008, with work taking just under two years to complete.

The official name of the bridge is the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, but to its friends the bridge is just called Bob.

And my first step into Iowa.

And the one the other side of the bridge….

View from the bridge.

The city tourist authorities have given the bridge its own Twitter account, BobTBridge, and it’s now one of the best rated locations in the city on TripAdvisor. And where there’s a TripAdvisor page there are always reviews to amuse me….

As some background, I used this bridge as I needed to cross to Council Bluffs where my hotel is, and it’s the only pedestrian bridge there is in the vicinity to get there. So this review:

“It’s neat but it never gets used. A whole lot of nothing on both sides of the river. It’s a good drive by bridge.”

This is a reminder that some people actually walk and can’t use the nearby road bridge…. And it connects the largest city in the state of Nebraska with a large urban area the other side of the river, which is an interesting “whole lot of nothing”.

And the:

“Dumb idea. It’s a bridge. OK it twists a little bit, is limited to pedestrian traffic, and looks very pretty at night. However, I personally consider it to have been a waste of donated money and tax dollars. It was a dumb idea when it was built and remains so.”

It’s the “limited to pedestrian traffic” which is the reason that the bridge seems so hugely popular on TripAdvisor at least.

Anyway, I like the bridge, there were some families taking photos of how they had one foot in each state, it’s a useful bridge for getting across the river and it looks well made and has brought some life to the area in which it is located.