His fame is perhaps well deserved. Indeed, the Bay Bridge troll is credited with keeping mayhem at bay for the past 24 years.
Other famous infrastructure projects also have guardian trolls. For instance, Seattle’s George Washington Memorial Bridge (also known as the Aurora Bridge) has the famous Fremont Troll, which patrols the underpass on North 36th Street. Sculpted from steel and concrete, and designed to look like a “grumpy old man,” the Fremont Troll (named for the Seattle neighborhood in which it is located) is large enough to climb on, and too big to have snuck onto the scene. Rather, the nonprofit Fremont Arts Council commissioned the statue in 1990, in an effort to revitalize the blighted underpass. Today, the troll provides a place for children and adults to scramble and sit.16 This violates the traditional notion of trolls as solitary creatures, but has doubtless contributed to the statue’s popularity. Norway’s most famous highway also boasts its resident trolls. The Trollstiegen road runs up a steep mountain and crosses the Stigofssen falls more than 1,000 feet in the air. Completed in 1936, it is still lauded as an impressive feat of engineering. Moreover, it is the only road in Norway to be outfitted with an official “Troll Crossing” sign.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The fate of the Bay Bridge Troll has become a cause of concern in light of the anticipated demolition of the original East Span, and its imminent replacement with a new bridge. The Bay Bridge PublicInformation Office has promised that “[w]hen the original East Span is demolished, the troll will be relocated.”18 But it is not yet clear where the troll will go. And there may be some misgivings about separating him from the bridge that he has guarded for so long. In fact, given that the troll has beenprotecting the old bridge from damage for the past 24 years, it is entirely fitting that part of the bridgebe preserved both in his honor and the honor of those who worked to restore the bridge to safety after the upper deck collapsed.
The Project Management Team recommends that the Bay Bridge troll be preserved along with the upper deck beam from the deck section above Pier E-9 on which he now resides. In this way, the troll can relocate to a safe and shaded spot in the newly refurbished IERBYS building without ever having to leave his niche on the beam.
While no causal relationship can be established between the presence of the Bay Bridge troll and the absence of any earthquake-related interruptions to the Bay Bridge’s service during the past 24 years, the correlation cannot be denied. Following the Latin principle, Primum non nocere (First, do no harm), the Project Management Team further recommends that another troll statue be created to guard the Bay Bridge; installed on or near the new East Span, this new troll may provide a possible extra measure of safety for the new East Span itself, and for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians crossing the new bridge.
16 Gabriel Campanario, "20 Years Later, Freemont Troll Abides," The Seattle Times 23 Nov. 2010.
17 FjordNorway Travel Guide. Bergen, Norway: Fjord Norge AS, 2013.
18 "Bay Bridge History Timeline," op cite.
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