San Francisco officials have shut down the Golden Gate Bridge for the weekend to construct safety barriers to better separate the streams of traffic, the longest shutdown in the iconic bridge’s 77-year history.
The city officially closed the bridge to vehicular traffic over the weekend as crews worked to install a movable median barrier that would present head-on collisions, which have caused 16 deaths in 128 crashes since 1970. The bridge remained open for buses, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
The bridge fortunately didn’t snarl traffic after closing a minute after midnight on Saturday. It will reopen early Monday morning, according to an SFGate.com report.
The barrier, which will cost the city $30 million, will replace the flimsy yellow plastic pylons that divided the two streams of traffic on the bridge and provided little protection should a car stray from oncoming traffic for whatever reason.
The new barrier should keep cars moving in the correct direction even in the case of an accident, as they are steel-encased concrete segments that are a foot wide and 32 inches tall. Crews installed 3,500 separate pieces of the barrier in highly choreographed work. Each barrier is connected to the next with large steel pins.
Such barriers are often called “road zippers” due to their appearance, and bridge crews will use “zipper trucks” to lift the barriers and rearrange them to accommodate changes in the lanes for rush-hour traffic. In the past, they placed the yellow pylons by hand.
Such road zippers have been used before, such as on the bridge that spans to Coronado Island in San Diego.
Drivers in San Francisco were redirected to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and the Bay Bridge, which did not see significantly heavy traffic on Saturday, according to the report.
On a given weekend day, about 80,000 vehicles cross the bridge. The Bay Bridge, which connects Oakland to San Francisco typically sees much more traffic.
