“I am frustrated….I am alone and cold and I have been left all alone here for a long time!”
These words make up the biography for the “Airport bridge” Twitter account. That’s right, the airport bridge.
Launched Monday of this week, the account personifies one of Ottawa’s longest-running municipal disasters, a proposed pedestrian bridge originally scheduled to be completed in October 2011. Nearly three years later and $4.5 million over budget, the bridge remains incomplete.
The bridge has faced a number of problems, from faulty concrete that needed to be torn down and re-poured to rethinking its entire design. While the city expects the bridge to be complete by this year, no construction is currently underway.
As a result, one fed-up citizen decided to take the matter into her/his own hands, and where better to turn than social media?
After a relatively quiet first two days, the Huffington Post published a story about the Twitter account on Wednesday night, when it had 35 followers. By Thursday, the account had taken off. At the time of writing, the bridge’s account was up to over 620 followers.
While the creator of the account has been extremely loyal to the idea of being a personified version of the bridge as opposed to revealing his/her identity, s/he has remained active in pursuing media attention.
