RON HENGGELER

Dusk on Ocean Beach

January 6, 2015

Sunset on Ocean Beach

January 6, 2015

On Saturday morning I went to photograph the bridge and the roadwork.
I arrived at 8:30am and shot photos on the bridge and the roadwork until 1pm.
Here are some of my photos from Saturday morning.

The staging area in San Francisco’s Presidio for loading and transporting the 3,500 separate pieces of the barrier.

The bridge and the morning’s fog slowly beginning to burn off

The south tower and morning fog
Until 1964, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet.
Since 1964 its main span length has been surpassed by ten bridges; it now has the second-longest main span in the United States, after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City.

Morning stillness, lifting fog, and no traffic
The Golden Gate Bridge was closed to traffic over the weekend as crews installed the movable median barrier designed to prevent head-on collisions.

The $30 million barrier will replace the yellow plastic pylons that bridge workers used to place in the middle of the bridge by hand to separate traffic flowing in opposite directions.

Looking through the south tower to the north tower
The total length of the Golden Gate Bridge from abutment to abutment is 8,981 feet.

Looking up to the south tower.
The Golden Gate Bridge's clearance above high water averages 220 feet while its towers, at 746 feet above the water, were the world's tallest on a suspension bridge until 1998 when bridges in Denmark and Japan were completed.

A detail of the south tower’s archway.

A detail of the cables connecting to the roadway

The steel doorway on the side of the south tower that opens up to the tower’s elevator
The bridge has approximately 1,200,000 total rivets.

No traffic, a historic weekend
The weight of the roadway is hung from two cables that pass through the two main towers and are fixed in concrete at each end.
Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. There are 80,000 miles of wire in the main cables.

On Saturday morning, the highly choreographed work construction was humming along on schedule.
When I left the bridge shortly after noon, the crews working from both sides were more than halfway through laying out the barriers.

The individual pieces of the barrier are connected with large steel pins.
Visually, such barriers look something like zippers, and they are often referred to as “road zippers.”

Installing the zipper on the north side of the south tower.

Looking to the north tower with the zipper already in place.

The barrier will be 1.7-miles-long . It will cross the length of the Bridge and on the approach portion of Highway 101, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, starting at Alexander Avenue. Using transfer machines, the barrier will be moved several times a day to create more lanes in a particular direction to accommodate variable traffic demands such as the morning and evening commutes.

A shot of the bridge with the new zipper barrier taken from near the center of the bridge.

A sign on the bridge’s lamp post
The Golden Gate Bridge is the second-most used suicide site/suicide bridge in the world, after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The deck is about 245 feet above the water. After a fall of four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph. Most of the jumpers die from impact trauma.
About 5% of the jumpers survive the initial impact but generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water.
Most suicidal jumps occur on the side facing the bay. The side facing the Pacific is closed to pedestrians.

Looking down to the foot of the south tower that rises out of a coffer-dam built in the 1930’s.

In May 1987, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the Golden Gate Bridge district closed the bridge for a day to automobile traffic and allowed pedestrians to cross the bridge. However, this celebration attracted 750,000 to 1,000,000 people, and ineffective crowd control meant the bridge became congested with roughly 300,000 people, causing the center span of the bridge to flatten out under the weight.

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States.
It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

A gateway to heaven?

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 and repainting the bridge with zinc silicate primer and vinyl topcoats. Since 1990 acrylic topcoats have been used instead for air-quality reasons. The program was completed in 1995 and it is now maintained by 38 painters who touch up the paintwork where it becomes seriously corroded.

French tourists and photo-taking on the bridge

From 1971 to 2015, opposing traffic was separated by small, plastic pylons, and during that time, there were 16 fatalities resulting from 128 head-on collisions. To improve safety, the speed limit on the Golden Gate Bridge was reduced from 55 to 45 mph on October 1, 1983. Although there had been discussion concerning the installation of a movable barrier since the 1980s, only in March 2005 did the Bridge Board of Directors commit to finding funding to complete the $2 million study required prior to the installation of a movable median barrier. The installation of a movable median barrier was completed on January 11, 2015, following a closure of 45.5 hours to private vehicle traffic, the longest in the bridge's history. The new barrier system cost approximately $30 million to purchase and install.

As the barrier work crews from opposite sides began approaching each other, camera crews began preparing to document the moment.

On Sunday morning, Dave and I went into the Marin Headlands on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge to photograph the traffic-less bridge from the coastal ridge on the north side. Because the Golden Gate Bridge was closed, we drove over the Bay Bridge to Richmond, crossed the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge, and then approached the Marin Headlands from Sausalito on the north side of the Golden Gate.

On the round-about way to the Marin Headlands, I stopped on Yerba Buena Island to photograph the new Bay Bridge and current de-construction of the old cantilevered Bay Bridge.

From the top of Yerba Buena Island, a view of the new Bay Bridge and current de-construction of the old cantilevered Bay Bridge

The glimpsed view of the new Bay Bridge and current de-construction of the old cantilevered Bay Bridge

Crossing the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge on the way to the Marin Headlands to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge

A view of San Francisco from Sausalito

A view of Alcatraz from Sausalito

Point Binita seen from Battery Spencer

On late Sunday afternoon, a test run of the Zipper-Truck.
Starting Monday, bridge crews will use new “zipper trucks” to lift, shove, and place the concrete segments into position and reconfigure the lanes as needed.

The Golden Gate seen from Battery Spencer in the Marin Headlands

Photo was taken from Battery Spencer in the Marin Headlands.
The bridge with no traffic and the new zipper barrier in place

Pelicans glide near the south tower
Viewed from from Battery Spencer in the Marin Headlands with a 300 mm lens

Photographers at Battery Spencer in the Marin Headlands

Returning to San Francisco on Sunday night, a photo of the new Bay Bridge tower

Detail of the new Bay Bridge tower

On the Bay Bridge coming back into San Francisco after spending the day in the Marin Headlands