Eastbound and Down

by Marnie Patchett

Title

Eastbound and Down

Artist

Marnie Patchett

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

Eastbound on the Bay Bridge. Westbound traffic is on the upper deck.

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.It has one of the longest spans in the United States.

The toll bridge was conceived as early as the gold rush days, but construction did not begin until 1933. Designed by Charles H. Purcell, 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.

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. 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,as of 2014.

The bridge opened on November 12, 1936 at 12:30 p.m. In attendance were the former U.S. president Herbert Hoover, Senator William G. McAdoo, and the Governor of California, Frank Merriam. Governor Merriam opened the bridge by cutting gold chains across it with an acetylene cutting torch. The San Francisco Chronicle report of November 13, 1936 read:

The illuminated bridge as seen from the Embarcadero (San Francisco).

the greatest traffic jam in the history of S.F., a dozen old-fashioned New Year's eves thrown into one � the biggest and most good-natured crowd of tens of thousands ever to try and walk the streets and guide their autos on them � This was the city last night, the night of the bridge opening with every auto owner in the bay region, seemingly, trying to crowd his machine onto the great bridge.

And those who tried to view the brilliantly lighted structure from the hilltops and also view the fireworks display were numbered also in the thousands.

Every intersection in the city, particularly those near the San Francisco entrance to the bridge, was jammed with a slowly moving auto caravan.

Every available policeman in the department was called to duty to aid in regulating the city's greatest parade of autos.

One of the greatest traffic congestions of the evening was at Fifth and Mission Streets, with downtown traffic and bridge-bound traffic snarled in an almost hopeless mass. To add to the confusion, traffic signals jammed and did not synchronize.

Police reported that there was no lessening of the traffic over the bridge, all lanes being crowded with Oakland- or San-Francisco-bound machines far into the night.

The total cost was $77 million.Before opening the bridge was blessed by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugene Cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. Because it was in effect two bridges strung together, the western spans were ranked the second and third largest suspension bridges. Only the George Washington Bridge had a longer span between towers.

As part of the celebration a United States commemorative coin was produced by the San Francisco mint. A half dollar, the obverse portrays California's symbol, the grizzly bear, while the reverse presents a picture of the bridge spanning the bay. A total of 71,424 coins were sold, some from the bridge's tollbooths.

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May 11th, 2016

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