MAP OF THE BRIDGE.

Evening Star, Issue 23325, 22 July 1939, Page 20

MAP OF THE BRIDGE.

Each one of the circuits providing power for the 1,081 sodium vapour lights that illuminate the bridge and the clearance lights for air and water navigation—every electric .light outlet on the bridge—is represented by a small light on the map of the bridge which occupies a wall in the main office at the administration building. Should an electric circuit be impaired on the bridge, it is indicated on the map. Investigation and repairs are made promptly. ..... Connecting the two main divisions of the Bay Bridge is the world’s biggest—not longest—tunnel constructed for motor traffic. Its walls are lined with white tile. Once every three months, during the early morning hours when traffic is lightest, the walls of the tunnel are scrubbed by the bridge roadside maintenance crew.

At each end of the tunnel is an intersection to the bridge surface for the traffic between the mainland and the man-made Treasure Island, which is to become an airport after the closing of the Golden Gate International Exposition. The bridge travelling public is familiar with the loudspeaker system employed by the patrolmen to regulate the traffic at the island intersection. The speaker system supplements the usual automatic traffic signals and the patrolman at the microphone uses it merely to correct confused drivers.

TOLL GATE LOUDSPEAKER. Heard by the general public even more often is the loudspeaker installed above the toll gate lanes. Trucks and buses have their own approach to the lower deck of the bridge and passenger automobiles are warned away by a large sign. Frequently an automobile driver starts to use the truck approach *and must be diverted by the man behind a microphone at the toll gate. Trucks, buses, and inter-urban electric trains are restricted to, the lower deck of the bridge. Besides the regular commuters who ride the trains daily there had been, up to March 1, 1939, some 5,000,000 people who crossed the bridge in 263,923 buses. In the first 28 months of use 1,400,796 tons of freight were carted over the Bay on 850,382 trucks. The motor cycle officers of the patrol guard the lower deck with the same service that they extend to the passenger car deck above. Working in co-operation with the 36 members of the patrol are 76 toll collectors. MONEY ROLLS IN. Sixteen traffic lanes, four equipped with scales for weighing trucks, are provided at the toll gate where the daily average of £2,600 is collected in addition to the usual monthly credit accounts amounting to £IO,OOO. In each of the toll lanes is a cash register which records, in two different places, the money received and at the same time checks twice the motor vehicles passing through the gate. The chance for a mistake in counting the money and traffic is practically eliminated. The toll collectors have proved.to be so accurate that the variance is between two and four cents per 1,000 dollars. Currency collected at the gate is counted by hand, but. the coinage goes into a special counting machine, where the different sizes are separated and counted automatically.

Toll collectors are peace officers with power of arrest granted, as in the case of the patrolman, after their selection by civil service examination and a period of schooling. The 136 men on the San Francisco Bav Bridge ■who collect £2,690 dailv and direct the movements of 24,(*10 motor - vehicles safely over four and n-quarter miles of navigable salt water arc busy men and efficient men, as their records reveal.