Deja Vu

No Snarls, No Signals

Tags:

automotive,

California,

infrastructure,

Oakland,

San Francisco,

traffic,

transportation

“Bay Bridge Reopens,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 9, 2009.

The Bay Bridge reopened at 6:30 a.m. today after crews working around the clock repaired a crack in a steel link on the eastern span, bringing relief to thousands of people who had assumed they would have to find other ways to get across the bay.

Cars led by a phalanx of California Highway Patrol officers began crossing less than two hours after the reopening time that Caltrans originally set when it closed the bridge Thursday evening to remove a section of the eastern span and install a temporary detour. And traffic resumed well ahead of the 5 a.m. Wednesday reopening that Caltrans scheduled Monday, after the crack in the steel link, called an eyebar, had been discovered over the weekend.

“Through the night, the crews have worked nonstop - for almost 70 hours - and were able to complete repair work on the damaged eyebar beam,” Caltrans Director Randy Iwasaki said at a hastily called news conference on Yerba Buena Island at 6:10 a.m. “The bridge has been inspected, and it's safer than it was when we closed it.”

The reopening took much of the load away from other bridges, BART and ferries, which otherwise would have been used by hundreds of thousands of extra people today.

“Running the World’s Greatest Bridge,” Popular Mechanics, Oct. 1937.

Crossing San Francisco bay last year called for an ocean trip on a slow ferry which battled fog, tides and shipping. Today you cross at forty-five miles per hour on a concrete highway hung 250 feet in the air.

On the gigantic new double-decked bay bridge motorists climb and descend steel hills, drive through a tunnel that pierces an island and look down on battleships and liners dwarfed to the size of models. The bridge carries you across four and one-half miles of navigable water and lands you in Oakland in ten minutes. It is two and one-half times longer than the next largest bridge in the world and cost $77,200,000 to build but you can drive across it for fifty cents.

One of the achievements of the bridge engineers is that the never-ending streams of traffic, with six lanes for cars on the upper deck and three lanes for trucks on the lower, are able to move continuously on their way with no traffic snarls and with no signals to hold them back. About 25,000 cars and trucks a day use the bridge and sort themselves out automatically in the systems of distributing roadways at each end. Each month 53,000,000 pounds of freight are carried across the structure. To keep this traffic on the go and to keep the bridge in first-class shape takes a big staff although on your drive across you are apt to see only a motorcycle officer or two and the toll collectors. But behind the scenes there is a large, busy organization. This bridge is so big that it has its own bank and its own jail. It has a hospital, fire department, administration building, seven electrical substations, and even its own publicity department. In all there are about 250 employees working in the different shifts, including bridge inspectors, guards, electricians, painters, toll collectors, auditors, garage men, and patrol officers. Running this bridge comes under the heading of big business.

As you drive to the Oakland toll gate your car scratches over a piano wire “catwhisker” projecting from the pavement and this relieves your car of any static charge, preventing a heavy shock to the collector as you hand him your money. Before the catwhiskers were installed the shocks were so strong that collectors often dropped coins as if they were red hot. Even now they get a tingle occasionally since the rubber insulation on some cars prevents all the static from being dissipated by the catwhisker.

When your toll is rung up on the register it flashes a visual receipt to you on an electrical indicator. At the same time a code number blinks on the roof of the toll station to give the same information to the sergeant on duty behind a window in the administation building. The money turned in by each collector must agree not only with the register record but with a counter buried in the pavement that clicks for every pair of axles that passes over it. From now on the toll money is under heavy guard. Each collector’s receipts, in a canvas bag, slides down an armored chute into the cashier’s room in the administration building. As much as $15,000 cash goes through this room every day so the room is protected by steel walls and laminated bulletproof windows and officers are always on guard outside. To get in you are locked through two armored doors and inside there are weapons and a telephone for calling outside help.

Catching automobile thieves at the toll plaza is part of the work of the motorcycle officers and now and then a counterfeiter is nabbed after he has paid his toll with fake money. By telephoning to officers stationed at the far end of the bridge the patrol captain can have any car stopped before it gets away. Officers patrolling the structure are called to their nearest bridge telephones by blue call lights that blink when the captain throws the general alarm switch.

Traffic must be kept moving all the time so it is against the law for you to stop your car or take a walk on the bridge. One dodge used by people who want to stop and admire the view is to pretend to run out of gasoline. To get away with it they go to the nearest of thirty-three emergency call boxes and break a glass dial that signals for a service car. The disadvantage of this is that the service car, equipped for every kind of trouble, arrives within a couple of minutes and then the sight-seers must be on their way again. The minimum charge for gasoline is ninety cents for three gallons. Roadside tire service costs half a dollar and being towed off the bridge costs twice the toll fee paid. Contrary to general belief motorists are not fined or charged excessively when their cars break down. The average charge per breakdown so far has been ninety-one cents, including every kind of service. When a stalled motorist signals for help on the bridge his alarm is registered in the tow-car garage and also at the highway patrol office, where an officer is sent immediately to the call box from which the alarm originated. His job is to direct traffic around the stalled car. After dark he sets out signal flares to prevent accidents.

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