On southbound I-57 approaching 107th, there's a green-painted railroad overpass. In the middle of the span, there are two telegraph poles that are held onto the side of the structure by steel cylinders. The wires are long-gone.
It's as though the lines couldn't be rerouted or otherwise strung across in a better way when the bridge was constructed.
I've never seen another set-up like this, not that I paid attention to such things before.
I would have thought that it was signal wires for the RR or one of the utility companies owned a ROW there and had to keep them in place and in use during construction.
That overpass was property of the Pennsylvania, later the Penn-Central RR. It's trains ran along Beverly Avenue and bisected the Rock Island Tracks at 103rd. & Vincennes. The Pennsylvania tracks are long gone and houses were built along its Beverly Avenue stretch at least 30/35 years ago.
I'm not aware of any efforts to turn the right of way into a bike path. Truth is those tracks went through what are now some very high crime areas. I'd love to know who and how someone was able to build on the right-of-way along Beverly avenue. I suppose it was possible to buy it out of the Penn-Central bankruptcy, but I was always under the impression that right of ways reverted back to the government.