In 1951, the streetcar era reached the end of the line in Des Moines.  The last of the iron-wheeled streetcars were converted to rubber-tired buses, and the abandoned trolley rails were paved over or removed.

With one exception.  An old streetcar bridge that spanned the Des Moines River just south of Euclid Avenue was donated to the city, and the bridge, which was built in about 1900, stood neglected but essentially undisturbed for the next half-century.

Beginning next month, the old Des Moines Inter-Urban Railway Co. Bridge will be back in service.  This time it will carry not trolley cars but bicycles, pedestrians, and in-line skaters on the Des Moines Interurban Trail that runs along Urbandale Avenue, following the route of the old streetcar line that once served the western suburbs of Urbandale.

This is an event worthy of celebration for a number of reasons.

It is a wonder that the city did not dynamite the steel-truss bridge, as it has the other abandoned railroad trestles.  Instead, the city eventually recognized not only its strategic value in linking bike trails, but its historic value.  Last year, the city obtained a $200,000 federal transportation grant to restore the historic span and matched it to pay for a $450,000 restoration and a new deck surface.

Besides the opportunity to preserve-and to find a new purpose for-a century-old relic from Des Moines' streetcar days, the reopening of the Inter-Urban Railway Bridge links bike trails on the east and west sides of the city.  It will now be possible to bike from the northwest side across the Des Moines River to the greenbelt trail on the east side of the river, which runs north to Saylorville and Polk City and south through downtown Des Moines to the southeast side.

Eventually, metropolitan Des Moines could have a vast network of interconnected off-street trails.  Last month, the Des Moines Metropolitan Planning Organization assembled a map identifying 44 off-street trails in Des Moines, Polk County, and the suburbs.  If a majority of those are eventually linked-the goal of Des Moines, Polk, and suburban officials-it would be possible to wheel or walk throughout the entire metro area without having to encounter automobile traffic.

There would be a certain irony for the city to build a transportation system at the end of the 20th century that enables people to get about by walking or biking, much as they did at the beginning of the century.  The irony is enriched in the use of a vestige of the streetcar era to help make it possible.

The city of Des Moines deserves a round of applause for its contribution to this metro trail network, and to the preservation of an irreplaceable piece of the city's transportation history in the Inter-Urban Railway bridge.

Des Moines Register Editorial, Aug. 30, 1999