Move over Auburn Walmart pole. Meet Westbrook’s Brown Street Bridge.
The bollard bearing a stop sign outside the Walmart in Auburn is a notorious local attraction because of the inexplicable number of drivers who crash into it.
Between 2020 and early 2023, there had been more than 130 crashes involving the pole. The resilient pole has generated headlines locally in this newspaper, as well as nationally in the Boston Globe and internationally in the Daily Mail.
Well, there’s another piece of infrastructure holding its own against hapless and inattentive drivers.
The Brown Street Bridge in Westbrook claimed another victim on Thursday morning. Credit: Courtesy of the Westbrook Professional Firefighters
The Brown Street Bridge carries train tracks over Brown Street in Westbrook. It has a clearance of 11.5 feet. Even with big yellow signs announcing the low clearance, many trucks have tried to squeeze through anyway.
On Thursday morning, the Brown Street Bridge ate through one truck like a can opener, with the Westbrook Professional Firefighters advising drivers to avoid the area.
Westbrook police estimated it could take up to two hours to clear the wreck. There were no injuries.
The Brown Street Bridge thoroughly chewed up a luckless box truck in April. At the time, police said it was the latest among several crashes involving trucks and the bridge over the previous couple months.
The previous September saw a tractor-trailer become wedged under the bridge after trying to squeeze beneath it.
“[I]f you drive a truck, please pay attention to those big yellow signs that tell you how tall the bridge actually is…..” Westbrook police said in a Thursday morning social media post.
You can’t get a square peg in a round hole, and you can’t squeeze a tall truck under the Brown Street Bridge.
