Quoting Gary C. New via tor-relays (2022-12-10 04:20:48)
What is the status of Bug #7349 - Obfsbridges should be able to "disable" their ORPort? https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/7349 I recently setup a loadbalanced OBFS4 bridge and would prefer not to expose the ORPort to the World. I've noticed that some of the tasks to make this possible have been implemented, but it isn't clear whether everything needed is in place as I receive a bridge/relay down status on metrics.torproject.org when the ORPort isn't exposed to the World.
We do still need the ORPort reachable. The bridge authority does use that port to check if the bridge is running (marking the 'running' flag to it). We are still using that flag to decide what bridges are distributed, we'll like to revisit that in the future. But for now, please expose the ORPort to the world.