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Free Traveling Guides » States » California » Greater San Francisco
Bay Bridge
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is locally known as the Bay Bridge. It is the most expensive and largest bridge of its time. The Bay Bridge is a toll bridge which runs across the San Francisco Bay from Oakland and San Francisco.
The western crossing of Bay Bridge is from San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, a natural island mid-way between San Francisco and Oakland. The western crossing consists of two suspension bridges and three shorter truss spans connecting the San Francisco landing to the western cable anchorage on Rincon Hill. The eastern span of goes from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland. This span has a truss cantilever design.
The eastern and western spans are connected at Yerba Buena Island by a bore tunnel, which is the world’s largest diameter such tunnel. This tunnel is 76 feet wide and is as high as a four story building.
The Bay Bridge opened for traffic on November 12, 1936, six months before the official opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. Today, the Bay Bridge is one of the busiest bridges in the US, carrying approximately 280,000 vehicles per day.
In 1989, the eastern span of the Bay Bridge suffered severe damage during the Loma Prieta earthquake. The bridge was seismically retrofitted so that each span was reinforced and rebuilt to withstand another major earthquake.
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