Everything about The Golden Gate Bridge totally explained
The
Golden Gate Bridge is a
suspension bridge spanning the
Golden Gate, the opening of the
San Francisco Bay onto the
Pacific Ocean. As part of both
US Highway 101 and
State Route 1, it connects the city of
San Francisco on the northern tip of the
San Francisco Peninsula to
Marin County.
The Golden Gate Bridge had the
longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1937 and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and
California. Since its completion, the span length has been surpassed by eight other bridges. It still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States, after the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in
New York City. In
2007, it was ranked fifth on the
List of America's Favorite Architecture by the
American Institute of Architects.
Setting
The Golden Gate Bridge spans the Golden Gate, a narrow, deep
strait that serves as the mouth of the
San Francisco Bay, between San Francisco at the northernmost tip of the
San Francisco Peninsula, and the
Marin Headlands at the far southern end of Marin County. Although close by proximity, the two sides of the strait are separated by significant natural obstacles. Crossing the strait directly by boat is dangerous because of strong currents and lack of suitable landings. Ocean tides drive an average of 528 billion gallons (2 billion cubic meters) of water every six hours, at peak currents exceeding 5.6 miles per hour (2.5 m/s). Circumnavigating the Bay, however, involves a trip of several hundred miles and crossing several major rivers.
History
Ferry service
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route from San Francisco to what is now
Marin County was by boat, through the interior of the San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco from what is now
Marin County. The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service launched in 1868, which eventually became the
Golden Gate Ferry Company, a
Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the
Hyde Street Pier at the foot of Van Ness Avenue in
San Francisco and
Sausalito in
Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the
Ferry Building took twenty-seven minutes.
Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it didn't have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city’s growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said a bridge couldn’t be built across the strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water deep at the center of the channel, and almost constant winds of . Experts said ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation. San Francisco's City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, impractical for the time, and fielded the question to bridge engineers of whether it could be built for less. At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges, but mostly inland and nothing on the scale of the new project. The bridge faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. The Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the most powerful business interests in California, opposed the bridge as competition to its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit against the project, leading to a mass boycott of the ferry service. Another ally was the fledging
automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges to increase demand for automobiles.
Design
Strauss was Chief Engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project. responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture fell on other experts.
Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and
Art Deco elements such as the streetlights, railing, and walkways. Morrow also chose the famous
International Orange color.
Senior engineer
Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with famed bridge designer
Leon Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project. Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers. Only much later were the contributions of the others on the design team properly appreciated. The construction budget at the time of approval was $30.1 million. However, the District was unable to sell the bonds until 1932, when the founder of San Francisco-based
Bank of America agreed on behalf of his bank to buy the entire issue in order to help the local economy.
Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. A graduate of the
University of Cincinnati, he'd placed a brick from his
alma mater's demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise unprotected steelworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were near completion when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal)
Halfway to Hell Club.
The project was finished by April 1937, $1.3 million under budget. The color was selected by consulting architect Irving Morrow because it blends well with the natural surroundings yet enhances the bridge's visibility in fog.
The bridge is widely considered one of the most beautiful examples of bridge engineering, both as a structural design challenge and for its aesthetic appeal. It was declared one of the modern
Wonders of the World by the
American Society of Civil Engineers. According to Frommer's travel guide, the Golden Gate Bridge is "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world" (although Frommers also bestows the "most photographed" honor on
Tower Bridge in
London,
England).
Aesthetics was the foremost reason why the first design of Joseph Strauss was rejected. Upon re-submission of his bridge construction plan he added details, such as lighting, to outline the bridge's cables and towers.
The Golden Gate Bridge has a similar sister bridge in
Lisbon,
Portugal. The red-painted
Ponte 25 de Abril (25th April Bridge) is spans .
Paintwork
The bridge was originally painted with
red lead primer and a
lead-based
topcoat, which was touched up as required. In the mid-1960s, a program was started to improve corrosion protection by stripping the original paint off and repainting the bridge with
zinc silicate primer and, originally,
vinyl topcoats.
Acrylic topcoats have been used instead since 1990 for air quality reasons. The program was completed in 1995, and there's now maintenance by 38 painters to touch up the paintwork where it becomes seriously eroded.
Current issues
Economics
The last of the construction bonds were retired in 1971, with $35 million in principal and nearly $39 million in interest raised entirely from bridge tolls.
On
September 1 2002, the auto cash toll for Southbound
motor vehicles was raised from $3 to $5, and the FasTrak toll was increased from $3 to $4. Northbound motor vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic remains toll free. The rate for two-axle vehicles and motorcycles is $5 cash, or $4 with
FasTrak electronic RF payments. For vehicles with more than two axles, the toll rate is $2.50 per axle.
In November 2006, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District recommended a
corporate sponsorship program for the bridge to address its operating deficit, projected at $80 million over five years. The District promised that the proposal, which it called a "partnership program", wouldn't include changing the name of the bridge or placing
advertising on the bridge itself. In October 2007, the Board unanimously voted to discontinue the proposal and seek additional revenue through other means, most likely a toll increase.
Suicides
The Golden Gate Bridge is a frequent site for
suicide. The deck is approximately above the water. After a fall of approximately four seconds jumpers hit the water at, which is nearly always fatal.
The first suicide occurred only days after the Bridge opened. There is no accurate figure on the number of suicides since 1937, because many were not witnessed. People have been known to travel to San Francisco specifically to jump off the bridge, and may take a bus or cab to the site; police sometimes find abandoned rental cars in the parking lot. Currents beneath the bridge are very strong, and some jumpers have undoubtedly been washed out to sea without ever being seen. The water may be as cold as, and
great white sharks, which tend to congregate around the
Farallon Islands, are sometimes seen under the bridge.
An official suicide count was kept, sorted according to which of the bridge's 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped. The count exceeded 1,200 when the count ended in 2005, and new suicides were averaging one every two weeks. There were 34 bridge jump suicides in 2006 whose bodies were recovered, in addition to four jumps which were witnessed but whose bodies were never recovered, and several bodies recovered suspected to be from bridge jumps. The California Highway Patrol removed seventy apparently suicidal people from the bridge that year. Currently, it's said that a person jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge every 15 days.
As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump. A young woman from
Piedmont, California, may be the only person to have jumped from the bridge twice. She survived the first jump in early 1988, but died in her second attempt later that year.
Engineering professor
Natalie Jeremijenko, as part of her
Bureau of Inverse Technology art collective, created a "Despondency Index" by correlating the
Dow Jones Industrial Average with the number of jumpers detected by "Suicide Boxes" containing motion-detecting cameras, which she claimed to have set up under the bridge. The boxes purportedly recorded 17 jumps in three months, far greater than the official count. The
Whitney Museum, though questioning whether Jeremijenko's suicide detection technology actually existed, nevertheless included her project in its prestigious
Whitney Biennial.
Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge is a theme of
Jenni Olson's experimental film,
The Joy of Life (2005).
Eric Steel's 2006 documentary
The Bridge recorded 23 of the 24 known suicides during 2004.
Various methods have been proposed and implemented to reduce the number of suicides. The bridge is fitted with
suicide hotline telephones, and staff patrol the bridge in carts, looking for people who appear to be planning to jump. The bridge is now closed to pedestrians at night. Cyclists are still permitted across at night, but must be buzzed in and out through the remotely controlled security gates. Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier have been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition. The estimated cost of a barrier is between $15 and $20 million. One recurring proposal is to build a barrier to replace or augment the low railing, a component of the bridge's original architectural design. New barriers have eliminated suicides at other landmarks around the world, but were opposed for the Golden Gate Bridge for reasons of cost, aesthetics, and safety (the load from a poorly-designed barrier could significantly affect the bridge's structural integrity during a strong windstorm).
Wind
Since its completion, the Golden Gate Bridge has been closed due to weather conditions only three times: on
December 1 1951, due to gusts of ; on
December 23 1982, due to winds of ; and on
December 3 1983, due to wind gusts of .
Art, photography, and culture
The Golden Gate Bridge is among the most recognizable structures in the world. The bridge view is beautiful most times of the day, and especially nice during late Autumn. Its distinctive reddish color also makes it a popular places for photography enthusiasts and tourists.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Golden Gate Bridge'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://golden_gate_bridge.totallyexplained.com">Golden Gate Bridge Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
