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Golden Gate Bridge finally installs anti-suicide nets after years of delay

2023-11-07T12:51:00-05:00

Construction of the lingering suicide prevention upgrades is wrapping up on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The project's long road to culmination was covered by the New York Times recently as contractors work to finish installing the netting system, which was more than 80% in place as of September.

Work began in August of 2018 after an additional $124 million in funds needed for the project was eventually raised. It then hit further delays in the form of a contractor’s breach-of-contract lawsuit arising from significant cost overruns, which drove the installation's final price from $142 million to the $400 million final reported estimate.

Some have framed the project as emblematic of the “wrong approach” to suicide prevention, saying they are susceptible to second attempts and that money is better distributed through the city’s mental health network. Dennis Mulligan, the General Manager and...

San Francisco's Presidio Tunnel Tops attraction gets an opening date

2022-04-16T10:00:00-04:00

The much-awaited debut of San Francisco's Presidio Tunnel Tops is now set for July 17th, according to a recent announcement from the city and design partner James Corner Field Operations.

The new attraction has been in the works since at least the early 90s when San Francisco’s seismically-untenable Doyle Drive was declared unsafe in its present form, and a plan was hatched to submerge the highway section into tunnels with a connector on top to give the park an unencumbered layout for the first time.

Image courtesy James Corner Field Operations

Situated above the highway to the Golden Gate Bridge, the Tunnel Tops’ design was the product of hundreds of hours of input from more than 10,000 community members and a whopping $118 million public-private investment.

Image courtesy James Corner Field Operations

The 14-acre park now includes a comprehensive network of hiking trails, picnicking areas, a visitors center, and a meadow with 180 different...

San Francisco's bridge authority is finally moving forward to amend the Golden Gate's noisy new feature

2021-12-14T16:38:00-05:00

The maddening hum of safety slats on the pedestrian handrails of the Golden Gate Bridge will finally be silenced under a recently released proposal by the Bridge District. The fix — devised and tested by bridge engineers in consultation with aerodynamic and acoustic experts — calls for attaching U-shaped clips containing a thin rubber sleeve to all 12,000 vertical slats on the railings.

The haunting acoustic hum is the direct result of a $12 million wind retrofit project authored by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. A few enterprising locals have made the most of the deafening din, although the majority of drivers in the Bay Area were vocally against it, leading to the change.

The newly-approved upgrades will install a series of sound-absorbing rubber clips along the bridge’s pedestrian walkway that can mitigate the effects of the larger wind safety slats by up to 75%, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The costs will run around $450,000 and will be completely installed by the end of next year barring any major delays.

“It’s a tricky business. We want to be absolutely sure we get it right,” bridge spokesman Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz told the Chronicle back in May. “We will never sacrifice the structural integrity of the bridge, but we want to be responsive to our neighbors.’’

An early drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge showcases a radically different design

2021-08-16T18:37:00-04:00

The single image published Dec. 8, 1922, resembles the industrial Carquinez Bridge, except at 20 times the scale. It’s the kind of bridge one designs when all they have to work with is Popsicle sticks and string.

An engineer turned newspaper editor named James Wilkins was the first to propose the bridge in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article. Joseph Strauss' early plans called for a cantilever-suspension hybrid but were later changed due to eight-figure cost concerns.

Illustration of the preliminary cantilever-suspension hybrid concept by Joseph Strauss in 1921.

The bridge has recently been put to use as an impromptu music prop after a 2020 retrofit added an unintended sonic feature. Car traffic on the bridge has also declined in a potential harbinger of pandemic-produced changes. The Chronicle has more on the unearthed early drawing here.

A California musician is playing with the Golden Gate Bridge for an unlikely duet

2021-08-11T19:06:00-04:00

You might've heard of the concept of a "bridge" in music. Well, guitarist Nate Mercereau is taking that term literally. In July, he released a new album in collaboration with San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — yes, you read that right — titled Duets / Golden Gate Bridge, which features droning guitar improvisations over the eerie hum of the Bay Area landmark.

The Bay Area icon is known to have a humming effect resulting from a retrofit that added new slats to the bridge's handrails. Mercereau read about the effect in a San Francisco Chronicle article last year before recruiting an audio engineer and photographer to follow him into the Marin Headlands for an impromptu studio session.

Other "singing bridges" can be found in states like Kentucky and Michigan, though none are likely as big as the Golden Gate. New York City's Verrazzano Bridge has its moments as well.

GuitarWorld has more on the musical side of the 88-year-old suspension bridge. You can check out a video of Mercereau's performance below.

Golden Gate Bridge retrofit brings strange "ghostly hum" to the San Francisco landmark

2020-06-09T17:54:00-04:00

A ghostly, ear-rattling thrum emanating over the Golden Gate Bridge and throughout San Francisco’s Presidio neighborhood appears to be the result of high winds gusting through new slats on the bridge handrails. Officials at San Francisco’s 311 call center acknowledged the issue on Twitter after it snowballed Friday night, with multiple users posting recordings of the deafening noise.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District said that the sounds "were a known and inevitable part of a wind retrofit project" that the bridge had underwent.

"As part of that larger project, engineers replaced the thick, chunky slats on the western handrail with thinner slats, designed to help make the orange span more aerodynamic. Those slats allow more air to flow on the bridge, enabling the structure to withstand gusts of up to 100 mph, as opposed to 68 mph with the old rails," writes the Chronicle.

Check out a video of the noise below:

Construction on Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier has begun

2018-08-09T14:37:00-04:00

Construction has begun on a steel net to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, after years of debate over whether such an obstacle would mar the bridge’s romantic image. For at least the next two years, crews will toil throughout the night to build a coarse web of marine cable beneath the Art Deco span that is both an international symbol for engineering beauty and a magnet for suicides.

"Oakland companies Shimmick Construction Co. and Danny’s Construction Co. won the contract to design and build the net for $211 million — about three times what the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors had proposed when it put the project out for bid in 2014," the Chronicle reports.

Defacing the stone: a history of vandalism on famous architectural landmarks

2017-01-03T21:24:00-05:00

For as long as there have been landmarks, there have been people willing to deface them in the name of politics, art, fame or sheer stupidity.

From the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge to the Trevi fountain in Rome, this Guardian article explores a brief history of temporary vandalism on famous landmarks (and it's not just artfully placed tarps: try a dangling VW Beetle!).

From the annals of the vandals:

Golden Gate Bridge needs additional $124M to build suicide barrier

2016-10-04T14:09:00-04:00

Roughly 25 people each year jump to their deaths from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, which prompted city leaders to authorize a plan to erect a kind of suicide-prevention stainless steel cable netting twenty feet below the bridge's deck. The netting, which is painted gray to blend in with the water below, has worked wonders on other suicide-prone perches, including the Prince Edward Viaduct. As Global Construction Review reports, the problem for the Golden Gate is that the bids for the construction have come in about $100 million more than the city anticipated (plus a +/- $20 million contingency fund). The project is on hold until January 9th to allow the city to hustle up the additional funding.

Other notable San Francisco design news:

Happy 75th Birthday, Golden Gate Bridge

2012-05-24T13:58:00-04:00

For its 75th birthday on Sunday, the bridge's management is planning a celebration that includes music, art shows, lectures, a new book and a new visitor center. But one thing won't happen: Nobody gets to cross the bridge on foot on the big day.

PBS also published a very nice photo essay on the bridge's history: Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary.

Golden Gate Bridge sounds inspire musical works

2012-05-21T13:21:00-04:00

Musicians look at the bridge differently. Mickey Hart, the former Grateful Dead drummer, sees the Golden Gate Bridge as a "giant wind harp." He plans to be at Crissy Field on Sunday evening, the bridge's 75th birthday, to perform an original composition. The bridge will be the star. "The most famous bridge in America," Hart said, "is actually a musical instrument."