Bay Bridge Work
Unfinished History
Aerial view of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge under construction in 1935.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA
Workers on the Bay Bridge in 1935.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA
Maintenance workers hang precariously over bay in 1994.
Photo: Rick Gerharter
Lewis Mumford on the Bay Bridge:
"The Bay Bridge, between San Francisco and Oakland, brought far greater damage than benefits to both cities: it pumped up a once unnecessary volume of private traffic between them, at a great expense in expressway building and at a great waste in time and tension, spent crawling through rush-hour congestion. This traffic eventually wiped out, by impoverishment, the excellent rapid transit that had been installed on the Bay Bridge [the Key System] a form of transportation that the citizens of San Francisco have now repentantly voted to restore [the BART system], at an expense far greater than the cost of the original system. The ferry ride across the bay from Oakland was one of the regions greatest recreational resources — an incomparable experience, so exhilarating, at almost any time of the day, that one often sought an excuse for making the journey. It was not a long ride — not more than twenty-five minutes or so, and certainly not longer than the present depressing rush-hour crawl over the bridge."
-- Lewis Mumford, 1963
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View of San Francisco and Bay Bridge from canoe, 1996.
Video: Chris Carlsson
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