notes.husk.org/likes images.

Transbay Bikeway

Next year the new eastern span of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge will open. A double-decked, depression-era cantilever bridge damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is being replaced by a pair roadways suspended from a central tower.

It will also carry with it the first pedestrian and bicycle path across the bay… well halfway across the bay, but it still leaves a gap from Yerba Buena across the western span to San Francisco.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has been working on plans for a bike, pedestrian and maintenance path on the western span. Currently they intend to hang the new paths along the outside of the upper deck a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge.

This week I heard critical mass co-founder and local historian Chris Carlsson interviewed on KALW with an even simpler solution for a trans-bay bike path that draws from the Bay Bridge’s own history.

Today the Bay Bridge carries five lanes of traffic in each direction, but when it opened the top deck carried six lanes of divided, two-way traffic.

The lower deck was more complicated with both truck traffic in slightly width lanes and a pair of tracks for the long lost Key System. The three lanes of traffic on the lower deck were only for trucks, with two lanes going in the commute direction and one in the reverse.

Chris Carlsson suggests going back to the original, narrower, lane widths. Instead of adding a sixth lane of traffic though, the reclaimed width would be used to add the bike, pedestrian and maintenance path.

Well it sounds simple, but there are a lot of regulatory, security and accessibility requirements Caltrans had to take into account when studying their options.

Whichever way they are added though, the opening of the east span path will generate more interest and demand for a bike and pedestrian path on the western span.