Eyes on the Street: Progress on New Elysian Valley Walk/Bike L.A. River Bridge

The bridge itself isn’t there yet, but the city of Los Angeles’ new Elysian Valley walk/bike bridge is taking shape. There’s a new central pier wall and falsework structures that show the future bridge’s alignment.

The Elysian Valley bridge will be the downstream-most of four new bridges in the L.A. River’s central earthen-bottom stretch called the Glendale Narrows. Two of the other bridges are complete and open – in North Atwater and Atwater Village. The fourth, which will connect Glendale to Griffith Park, is funded but not yet under construction.

Elysian Valley’s bridge will span the L.A. River near the end of Altman Street. It will connect Elysian Valley (aka Frogtown) to Cypress Park and the planned large-scale river revitalization at Taylor Yard. Bridge project construction broke ground in June 2019 and is expected to be complete in 2021.

Streetsblog biked there last weekend and took a few photos.

On the Frogtown side of the river, the bridge on/off-ramp structure appears nearly complete.

In the middle of the river, the one central concrete pier wall is already built.

Spreading across the riverbed are a series of frames – called falsework – which will hold the bridge up during construction, and then be removed.

Some of the falsework will rest in cutouts in the sloped concrete channel walls.

Sitting in the river bed, there’s an under-construction metal structure that appears to be part of the central bridge span.

Earlier Streetsblog posts reported that the river path remained passable, but this is no longer the case. To bypass construction, pedestrians and cyclists can fairly easy follow construction detour signage for an alternate route on quiet Elysian Valley neighborhood streets.