But after consulting some of the same city and state engineers who devised the connector, he concluded that the McBride bridge was no longer safe or needed, and that it might cost some $6 million to fix, more than he believes this straitened city can afford.

Preservationists angrily reject the mayor’s figures, conjecturing a far lower cost to keep the bridge open just for pedestrians and bikes. They point to a new $5 increase in vehicle registration fees that promises Erie an additional $1.4 million a year for infrastructure improvements, a fund that could help pay to fix the bridge.

“We have serious problems on the east side,” Mr. Schember said. “If the city is going to put money to work there, there are much more worthwhile things to spend it on than the viaduct.”

He has yet to spell those things out. In place of the viaduct, the city has been contemplating larger parking lots.

For East Side residents — many of whom cannot afford cars and who often take their lives into their hands dashing on foot across the multilane expressway, scrambling over its concrete Jersey barriers to get home or to the neighborhood Walmart — the viaduct remains not just a way to get where they are going. It is a measure of where the city is headed.