Someone mentioned bridges around the North Jersey/NYC area, how they are down. Being someone who has boated around that area (in a sailboat, no less, with a tall mast), the answer is that it all depends on the area what they do. Amtrak has a swing bridge where the Hudson and Harlem rivers meet and they leave it open most of the time IME. On the Harlem river, the drawbridges there rarely need to be opened, so they are opened only by prior request, because unlike the bridge over the cuyahoga that is low to the water, most of the bridges around NYC are high enough that pleasure craft (with the exception of sailboats) can easily get under them, the drawbridges still there only would be opened for the rare commercial boat tall enough to need it open. With bridges on rivers like the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, they generally stay down, but again, they are high enough to pass most pleasure and commercial craft, there just isn't all that much commercial traffic big enough to warrant an opening (there is an Amtrak bridge over the Hackensack river that when it does need to be opened, causes grief because often it doesn't close right, another ancient beast left over from the PRR). So it isn't the same thing because for most of the waterways where pleasure craft and commercial craft operate, the bridges are high enough not to need to be opened.
The real problem to my eye is that bridge was built for a very different time and when needs were different and has not been replaced by either making it obsolete (route change) or replacing it with something that can accomodate most river traffic without having to be opened. In the last 50 years or so the Cuyahoga river has gone from being something of a sick joke (the river that caught fire) into being something enjoyed by a lot of people, but the railroad keeps using a bridge that was designed to be opened occasionally back in the good old days (it would be interesting to know when this was operated by the NYC back in the day, how many trains a day crossed the bridge),basically doing what far too many businesses do, wringing every cent out of archaic infrastructure then complaining about that infrastructure, was like the steel companies using 100 year old blast furnace technology and complaining they couldn't compete......
