San Francisco will get a new Bay Bridge this summer. The New York Daily News has an interesting story about that bridge's creation — and the earthquake-resistant engineering behind it.

  • Tarek Rached

    FYI, the official CalTrans site ( http://baybridgeinfo.org ) is shockingly informative, with a bunch of great videos on various aspects of the construction and design.

    (I’m not connected to CalTrans aside from my daily commute past the bridge-in-process.)

    • showme

      Reading the New York Daily News makes my brain hurt. Cool bridge, article could have been much better. Thanks for the link, Tarek.

  • Mark Dow

    ‘Likely to survive a 7.0 quake’ is earthquake-resistant, not earthquake-proof.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      You’re right. Poor choice of wording. I’ma fix that. 

    • BillStewart2012

      Also, the “estimated cost of $6.4 billion” is the after-the-fact cost; IIRC they were talking about $2B when they first proposed the new design.

  • thaum

    It looks a bit boring. I like the look of the current Bay Bridge, kthx.

  • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

    I think William Gibson suggests lots of epoxy. And BTW I just read the bridge trilogy again, last to first and I wonder if WG actually wrote the last two books. They contain a lot of stuff rehashed out of Virtual Light and slightly reorganised.

    • toobigtofail

       Yes, but… I think of them as three different points of view from three different characters on the same geography, i.e., one book concentrating on Rydell, one on Chevette… That said, I haven’t tried reading them last to first.

  • John Donohoe

    “earthquake-proof bridge” sounds a lot like “unsinkable ship”

    • BillStewart2012

      It also needs to be a ship-proof bridge, given the combinations of fog and carelessness that have led to occasional collisions.

  • mccrum

    For more of Tom Paiva’s shots (he’s been lugging an 8×10 view camera camera up there for a while now) in the evenings and at night, you should check out his blog.  A lot of great stuff if you’re into night shooting.
    http://blog.tompaiva.com/2012/12/12/bay-bridge-fall-2012/

  • toobigtofail

    “For a bridge that has been limited to automobiles throughout its history, however, getting halfway on foot or bike is better than nothing.”

    I can haz get halfway to work?

    • Jeffrey Baker

      Throughout its history, eh?  That’s nice revisionism on the part of the anti-transit memory hole brigade, but the original bay bridge carried two rail lines on the lower deck.  The new bridge is so flimsy it can’t carry any kind of rail.

      • BillStewart2012

        Yup.  Much of Berkeley and Oakland got settled largely because trains on the Bay Bridge made it practical to live over there and commute into the city. 

      • spejic

        But it doesn’t need to. There’s a tunnel under the bay for transit.

  • http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

    I dunno, people keep telling me this thing’s full of chinese steel, and we can’t trust the chinese to do steel right.  Probably filled it with secret back doors so their government can snoop through our bridge!

    (I’m just a little sick of the radio and billboard ads I’ve been seeing for the past couple of years…)

  • L_Mariachi

    Here’s Leo Villareal’s LED installation going up on the other span, should be ready to go pretty soon.

  • me me

    where does the bridge go?  to san francisco or oakland?

    • spejic

      Both. Just not at the same time.

    • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

      Yerba Buena Island (part of SF) and Oakland. The western span of the Bay Bridge is already upgraded to be more earthquake-resistant.

  • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

    I made a (pretty poor-looking, truth be told) video of a boat tour of the new bridge construction, using an old Flip camera (remember those?): https://vimeo.com/48859291