1960,2006 US-31 Beacon Blvd Bridge over Grand River in Grand Haven, MI

(Bridge Hunter; Historic Bridges; Satellite)

Street View

 

gbozik photography Flickr via BridgeHunter, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
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GrandHavenBridge

Photo via Facebook
"The drawbridge operates from Mar 15-Dec 15. Opening time is at 30 minutes past the hour. The bridge does not open at 7:30am, 12:30pm or 5:30pm on weekdays."

As Historic Bridges observed, it appears to be two separate bridges built side by side. Every source I've seen calls it a bascule bridge. I'm guessing that it is a trunnion bridge in particular. "A $3.5 million bike path was erected on the east span of the drawbridge in 2001. Re-balancing the bridge was a very large task and took careful consideration." [GrandHavenBridge]

Street View, Sep 2021

HollandSentinel [unknown paycount]
In addition to planned lane closures from 2021 to 2023, the bridge is no stranger to booboos. For example, it was stuck closed for a few hours Saturday, July 10, 2021, due to a short circuit burning out a relay.

This post was my motivation to research this bridge, and it is another example that this bridge seems to be rather "fragile."

Ottawa County Central Dispatch Authority posted, May 29, 2022

**The bridge is back in service**

MDOT is aware and trying to fix the Grand Haven bridge that is malfunctioning. At this time, try to avoid the area and use M-231 as an additional route around.

[This time it was stuck open.]

Fortunately, this boat docks downstream of this bridge. Looking at a satellite image, I could not find any evidence of commercial activity upstream of the bridge, just marinas.

Dennis DeBruler

MDOT did $850,000 of upgrades in Jan 2019 so that the bridge would not break down like it did on Memorial Day weekend in 2018. (That was a limit switch issue and they installed bypass switches for each limit switch. And they reduced the closure time from 9 to 7 minutes. The average usage is 60,000 vehicles per day. But it is around 120,000 during the summer.) [fox17online] Even with the $850,000 upgrade and a multi-million, 3-year construction program [GrandHavenTribune], the bridge broke down during this [2022] Memorial Day weekend.