Nights, weekends, long hours, lots of  responsibly, enormous stress, etc.. A classic Duluth job.

It's a pretty good paying job for the right person. I would just like to know if there is a degree for lift bridges (heh) or probably just some mechanical degree?

What if we had a live webcam on the harbor, and an internet voting system controlling the bridge?  Then people around the world could look at whether or not there is a ship coming and then vote on whether it should go up or not.  If a majority of respondents click "raise," it goes up and stays up until a majority click "lower."

Top o' Hill, perhaps the omission of that cliché was out of respect to operators, as the following from X-comm's "Crossing the Canal: An Illustrated History of Duluth's Aerial Bridge" might suggest:

"Larson may have thought the task of replacing Douville was difficult, but luckily he had another former Navy man on the bridge: Ryan Beamer. If you ever meet him, though, don't start by joking, "I bet your job has its ups and downs." The joke has been directed at bridge operators for years, and lazy copyeditors have relied on it as a headline grabber since at least the 1940s. But Beamer knew the joke long before he ever set foot on the bridge; prior to going to work on the span, he had served in the Navy as a submariner. Beamer spent five years as an electronics technician on the USS Kamehameha, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine."

The book contains a list of everyone who has ever worked as a bridge operator and bios of the supervisors, so if you are truly interested in the job, you might learn something about it before you interview! It helps to have a background in electronics, engineering, and a Naval experience seems to improve your employability on da bridge.

Job Instructions:

Press "Up."

Press "Down."

Yell at stragglers for dawdling.

You ever notice that red light on top of the main "arch?" Yep, changing that bulb is part of the job.

That WDIO story calls it the "ironic and historic aerial lift bridge." Poor treatment of a proper noun aside, what is "ironic" about the Aerial Life Bridge?

The only thing I can think of is maybe they mean it is made of iron? That isn't a correct usage of "ironic."

That story was 142 words long. I counted 12 errors.

Rats. Now they've corrected it. I was enjoying living in a city with an ironic landmark.