San Francisco Bay is a shallow estuary in the U.S. state of California. It is surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and is dominated by the large cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. It has one of the longest spans in the United States.
Joseph Baermann Strauss was an American structural engineer who revolutionized the design of bascule bridges. He was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, a suspension bridge.
A bascule bridge is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span, or leaf, throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. It may be single- or double-leafed.
The Key System was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
The eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was a construction project to replace a seismically unsound portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored suspension bridge (SAS) and a pair of viaducts. The bridge is in the U.S. state of California and crosses the San Francisco Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. The span replacement took place between 2002 and 2013, and is the most expensive public works project in California history, with a final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun from the original estimate of $250 million. Originally scheduled to open in 2007, several problems delayed the opening until September 2, 2013. With a width of 258.33 ft (78.74 m), comprising 10 general-purpose lanes, it is the world's widest bridge according to Guinness World Records.
The Niles Canyon Railway (NCRy) is a heritage railway running on the first transcontinental railroad alignment through Niles Canyon, between Sunol and the Niles district of Fremont in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The railway is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Niles Canyon Transcontinental Railroad Historic District. The railroad is operated and maintained by the Pacific Locomotive Association which preserves, restores and operates historic railroad equipment. The NCRy features public excursions with both steam and diesel locomotives along a well-preserved portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
The North Avenue Bridge can refer to one of three bridges that has carried North Avenue over the North Branch of the Chicago River on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. A center-pier swing bridge built in 1877 was replaced in 1907 by a bascule bridge, allowing river traffic more room for maneuvering in and out of the North Canal, just north of Goose Island.
The Posey and Webster Street Tubes are two parallel underwater tunnels connecting the cities of Oakland and Alameda, California, running beneath the Oakland Estuary. Both are immersed tubes, constructed by sinking precast concrete segments to a trench in the Estuary floor, then sealing them together to create a tunnel. The Posey Tube, completed in 1928, currently carries one-way (Oakland-bound) traffic under the Estuary, while the Webster Street Tube, completed in 1963, carries traffic from Oakland to Alameda.
The Oakland Estuary is the strait in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, separating the cities of Oakland and Alameda and the Alameda Island from the East Bay mainland. On its western end, it connects to San Francisco Bay proper, while its eastern end connects to San Leandro Bay.
The Henry Ford Bridge, also known as the Badger Avenue Bridge, is a bridge located in Los Angeles County, Southern California. It carries the Pacific Harbor Line railroad across the Cerritos Channel to Terminal Island from San Pedro, to serve the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach. It was built to accommodate operations at the Ford Long Beach Assembly plant which opened in 1930 and was closed in 1959.
The Cortland Street Drawbridge over the Chicago River is the original Chicago-style fixed-trunnion bascule bridge, designed by John Ericson and Edward Wilmann. When it opened in 1902, on Chicago's north side, it was the first such bridge built in the United States. The bridge was a major advance in American movable bridge engineering, and was the prototype for over 50 additional bridges in Chicago alone. The bridge was designated as an ASCE Civil Engineering Landmark in 1981, and a Chicago Landmark in 1991.
The Fruitvale Bridge and the Fruitvale Avenue Bridge are parallel bridges that cross the Oakland Estuary, linking the cities of Oakland and Alameda in California. The Fruitvale Bridge is a vertical-lift Warren through truss railroad moveable bridge, while the Fruitvale Avenue Bridge is a steel stringer road bascule bridge that connects Fruitvale Avenue in Oakland with Tilden Way in Alameda.
The West Jefferson Avenue–Rouge River Bridge is a bridge located where Jefferson Avenue crosses the Rouge River at the border of Detroit and River Rouge, Michigan. It is the only surviving pony truss bascule bridge in the state of Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
The Cherry Street Strauss Trunnion Bascule Bridge is a bascule bridge and Warren truss in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located in the industrial Port Lands area, it carries Cherry Street over the Toronto Harbour Ship Channel and opens to allow ships to access the channel and the turning basin beyond. There are two bascule bridges on Cherry Street. The other, smaller bridge, crosses the Keating Channel, while this bridge crosses the Ship Channel.
The High Street Bridge is a double-leaf bascule drawbridge spanning 296 feet of the Oakland Estuary in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States. It links the cities of Oakland and Alameda. The bridge is opened approximately 1,400 times a year. The bridge carries an average of 26,000 vehicles per year. The bridge was built when the Oakland Estuary was trenched, converting Alameda from a peninsula to an island.
The Dumbarton Rail Bridge lies just to the south of the Dumbarton road bridge. Built in 1910, the rail bridge was the first structure to span San Francisco Bay, shortening the rail route between Oakland and San Francisco by 26 miles (42 km). The last freight train traveled over the bridge in 1982, and it has been proposed since 1991 to reactivate passenger train service to relieve traffic on the road bridges, though this would entail a complete replacement of the existing bridge. Part of the western timber trestle approach collapsed in a suspected arson fire in 1998.
Eighth Street Bridge is a road bridge over the Passaic River in northeastern New Jersey, United States. Opened in 1915 as a bascule bridge, the bridge was fixed in place in 1977.
The Dumbarton Rail Corridor is a proposed transbay passenger rail line which would reuse the right-of-way that was initially constructed from 1907–1910 as the Dumbarton Cut-off. The Dumbarton Cut-off includes the first structure to span San Francisco Bay, the 1910 Dumbarton Rail Bridge, although the vintage Cut-off bridges would likely be replaced prior to activating new passenger service. Dumbarton Rail Corridor would provide service between Union City in the East Bay and Menlo Park on the Peninsula, with train service continuing to both San Francisco and San José along the existing Caltrain tracks. It has been in the planning stages since 1988, and would be the first above-ground transbay rail line since Key System electric trains stopped running on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge in 1958, and the first new transbay crossing of any kind since the completion of the Transbay Tube in 1974.
The San Leandro Bay Bridge, better known as the Bay Farm Island Bridge, is a single-leaf bascule drawbridge spanning the San Leandro Channel, the inlet of San Leandro Bay within the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States. It carries California State Route 61 and links the main island of Alameda with Bay Farm Island within the city of Alameda. The present bridge was completed in 1953; it is paralleled by a second bridge devoted to pedestrian and bicycle traffic, the Bay Farm Island Bicycle Bridge.
