San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge (known locally as the Bay Bridge) is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 240,000 vehicles a day on its two decks.[3][4] It has one of the longest spans in the United States.
Richmond RichmondSan Rafael Bridge
The toll bridge was conceived as early as the gold rush days, but construction did not begin until 1933. Designed by Charles H. Purcell,[6][7] and built by American Bridge Company, it opened on November 12, 1936, six months before the Golden Gate Bridge. It originally carried automobile traffic on its upper deck, and trucks and trains on the lower, but after the Key System abandoned rail service, the lower deck was converted to all-road traffic as well. In 1986 the bridge was unofficially dedicated to James Rolph.[8]
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San Francisco
San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge
San Francisco Bay
San Mateo
The bridge has two sections of roughly equal length; the older western section, officially known as the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge after the former San Francisco Mayor and California State Assembly Speaker, connects downtown San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island and the newer unnamed eastern section connects the island to Oakland. The Willie Brown bridge (west span) is a double suspension bridge with two decks, westbound traffic is carried on the upper deck and eastbound on the lower deck. Originally, the largest span of the original eastern section was a cantilever bridge. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a section of the eastern span’s upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck and the bridge was closed for a month. Reconstruction of the eastern section of the bridge as a causeway connected to a self-anchored suspension bridge began in 2002; the new bridge opened September 2, 2013 at a reported cost of over $6.5 billion.[9] Unlike the west span and the original east span, the new east span is a single deck with the eastbound and westbound lanes on each side making it the world’s widest bridge, according to Guinness World Records,[10] as of 2014.
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Golden Gate Bridge
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Dumbarton Bridge 10 km
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Bridges in the San Francisco Bay
Hill is the western anchorage and touch-down for the San Francisco landing of the Brown bridge connected by three shorter truss spans. The eastern crossing, between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland, was a cantilever bridge with a double-tower span, five medium truss spans, and a 14-section truss causeway. Due to earthquake concerns, the eastern crossing was replaced by a new crossing that opened on Labor Day 2013.[12] On Yerba Buena Island, the double-decked crossing is a 321-foot (98 m) concrete viaduct east of the west span’s cable anchorage, a 540-foot (160 m) tunnel through the island’s rocky central hill, another 790.8-foot (241.0 m) concrete viaduct, and a longer curved high-level steel truss viaduct that spans the final 1,169.7 feet (356.5 m) to the cantilever bridge.[13] The toll plaza on the Oakland side (since 1969 for westbound traffic only) has eighteen toll lanes, of which six are FasTrak-only. Metering signals are about 1,000 feet (300 m) west of the toll plaza. Two full-time bus-only lanes bypass the toll booths and metering lights around the right (north) side of the toll plaza; other high occupancy vehicles can use these lanes during weekday morning and afternoon commute periods. The two far-left toll lanes are high-occupancy vehicle lanes during weekday commute periods. During the morning commute hours, traffic congestion on the Oakland approach stretches back to
Composition
The bridge consists of two crossings, east and west of Yerba Buena Island, a natural mid-bay outcropping inside San Francisco city limits. The Western crossing (the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge) between Yerba Buena and downtown San Francisco has two complete suspension spans connected at a center anchorage.[11] Rincon 1