Andrew P. McArdle Memorial Bridge

The Andrew P. McArdle Memorial Bridge is a steel truss bascule bridge over the Chelsea Creek, just upstream of its confluence with the Mystic River and the Tobin Bridge. Also known as the Meridian Street Bridge, it connects Meridian Street in East Boston with Pearl Street in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The bridge is a split rolling bascule, meaning that instead of pivoting on axles, the two counterweighted spans are raised by rolling on large semi-circular gears.

Andrew McArdle Bridge
Andrew McArdle Bridge, from Wikimapia
Coordinates	42.3858516°N 71.0392682°W / 42.3858516; -71.0392682
Carries	Meridian Street in East Boston, Pearl Street in Chelsea
Crosses	Chelsea Creek
Locale	East Boston and Chelsea, Massachusetts
Official name	Andrew P. McArdle Memorial Bridge
Other name(s)	Meridian Street Bridge
Named for	Andrew P. McArdle (1896-1950)
Owner	MassDOT
Preceded by	Chelsea Street Bridge
Followed by	Boston Harbor
Characteristics
Design	Bascule bridge
Total length	1,075 feet (328 m)
Width	44 feet (13 m)
Longest span	225 feet (69 m)
Clearance above	21 feet (6.4 m) (closed), 157 feet (48 m) (open)
History
Opened	1954
Replaces	Meridian Street Swing Bridge (1901)
Statistics
Daily traffic	23,600, 4% truck (2014)
Toll	none
Location
References
http://bridgereports.com/1234922

The bridge was refurbished in 2002. According to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration 2017 National Bridge Inventory, the bridge structure's condition is poor and is "[b]asically intolerable requiring high priority of replacement."^[1]

Fatal accident

On New Year's Eve, 2013, an East Boston resident, Aura Garcia, was killed when the bridge operator accidentally opened the bridge while Garcia was crossing it.^[2][3] A lawsuit against the city of Boston was brought; in response to a motion to dismiss, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV determined that Garcia's death was "in all likelihood preventable" but did not meet the standard of the particular statutes cited, and thus granted the motion and dismissed the case.^[4]