ENORMOUS BRIDGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 254, 22 September 1930, Page 8

ENORMOUS BRIDGE.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY

CONSTRUCTION NEXT YEAR

After years of agitation San Francisco is at last to get its much-herald-ed bridge across the San Francisco Bay. Some of the details which recently were announced staggered the imagination. There will be steel cables, a yard thick, four towers the height of the Woolworth 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 war-time it could not block navigation.

These figures are those of Mr F. A. Savage, who has been appointed field engineer in the bridge construction. Commenting on the huge project, Mr Savage said: —“Tire bridge will be so gigantic that its measurements seem fancy rather than fact.” The . span will be the longest suspension bridge in the world, and will be built on new structural lines, with one bracing, arranged to beautify rather than break the 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 25ft deep. In spite of its weight, the bridge pressure will be equalised to place a pressure on the suspension towers of only 2001 b 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 60 feet wide, to carry four lanes of traffic. The War Department has issued a permit for the erection of the bridge,

which will be opened first as a toll bridge, but when the earnings have retired the bonus the bridge will become the property of the State of California, and will be operated 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 Rincon Hill-Goat 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.