I recently had the good fortune to take a tour of the construction site of the new San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.

We took a boat out to Yerba Buena Island.

The brown structure is a temporary wooden bridge built to hold the new road deck in place until the tower cables are complete and able to hold the roadway up.  The wooden structures  will all be taken down when the bridge is complete.

 The narrower white section on the middle and next to the old bridge will be a bicycle/pedestrian path on the bridge.                                                                  

This is the elevator we took up to the bridge deck.

This is an expansion joint used to connect two separate concrete sections of the bridge deck.

The expansion joint will fit in the groove shown in the next picture.

Cal Trans is recycling old and new bridge materials when no longer needed.

Self-Anchored Suspension Span (SAS) main cable

The openings between the two roadways allow light to shine over the bay for plants and fish.

Our ride back to Oakland.

These are bird ledges that have been constructed to encourage the birds that currently nest on the existing bridge to move over to the new bridge.  No birds were relocating so they hung some decoys to further entice them to move.

If you would like more information about bridge construction here are some materials available in Marin libraries.

Bridges : the science and art of the world's most inspiring structures / David Blockley

The gate : the true story of the design and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge / John van der Zee

Al Zampa and the Bay Area bridges / John V. Robinson

Bridges / David J. Brown

Angle of inspiration [videorecording] : Santiago Calatrava's Sundial Bridge / producer/director/editor, John Antonelli ; producer/writer/editor, Jessica Abbe

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Project    -   Cal Trans Bay Bridge website