ENORMOUS BRIDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 221, 18 September 1930, Page 3

ENORMOUS BRIDGE.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY.

CONSTRUCTION NEXT YEAR

WORLD'S LONGEST SUSPENSION.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, August 18.

After years of agitation San Francisco is at last to get its much-heraldea bridge across the San Francisco Bay. Some of the details which have just been announced stagger the imagination.

There will ,be .steel cables, a yard thick, four towers the height of the Woohvorth Building in New York, and a suspension: span four-fifths of a mile long. Beneath the projected 30,000,000 dollar Golden Gate Bridge will be water more than 300 feet deep, so that if the bridge were bombed in v.artime it could not block navigation. These figures are those of Mr. P. A. Savage,' who lias been appointed field engineer in the bridge construction. Commenting on the huge project, Mr. Savage said:—"The bridge will be so gigantic that its measurements seem fancy rather than fact." The span -will be the longest suspension bi'idge in the world, and will be built o!a new structural lines, with one bracing, arranged to beautify rather than break tho symmetry of the suspension truss. Cables .directly supporting the bridge will be suspended every 50 feet from the main suspension cable, and will be attached to a steel stiffening truss 25 feet deep. In spite of its Aveight, the bridge pressure will be equalised to place a pressure on the suspensio'n towers of only 2001b per square inch. Towers of the huge span will sink hundreds of feet into solid rock foundation. They will be 751 feet high and nearly 100 feet thick. The cables will be set 90 feet apart, and the bridge deck will be GO feet wide, to carry four lanes of traffic.

The, War Department lias issued, a permit for tlie erection of the bridge, which will be opened first as a toll bridge, but when the earnings lurve retired the bonds, the bridge will become the property of the State of California, and will beoperated as a free structure. Although the Government allows three years in its permit to commence work, it is planned to start construction by the first of the New Year, with completion due for about 1936. This will be at approximately the same time that the even larger 72,000,000 dollar Kmcon HillGoat Island cantilever bridge is due to be ready for operation. These two great bridges* will enormously facilitate the travel of hundreds of thousands of daily commuters across the San Francisco Bay.