Uploaded March 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
On a gloomy Sunday in January, 2018, I decided to get out of the house for an adventure. After riding Caltrain from Redwood City to Santa Clara, I boarded a Capitol Corridor train to Jack London Square in Oakland. I wandered the farmer’s market there looking at all kinds of goodies before boarding the San Francisco Bay Ferry to San Francisco. I strolled the Embarcadero, ate lunch at a nice restaurant and then hurriedly walked a mile to the Caltrain station to make the 3:37pm departure for home.
Here’s a few interesting facts about the Bay Bridge. When originally opened, the upper deck handled two-way car traffic while the lower deck handled trucks and buses in both directions. The lower deck also carried the Key System light rail traffic until its abandonment in 1960. The tracks also provided access to San Francisco for the Sacramento Northern Railroad and Southern Pacific interurban trains for a few years beginning in 1939.
Following the cessation of rail traffic in 1960, the bridge authority and California Department of Transportation began a project to convert the two decks to handle one-way traffic. In 1963 the reconfigured bridge opened to westbound traffic on the upper deck and eastbound traffic on the lower.
During the Loma Prieta earthquake in October, 1989, a section of the upper deck collapsed in the cantilevered eastern half of the bridge. The bridge was closed for only a month as crews worked 24 hours a day to restore the vital commuter link into San Francisco. In October, 2013, a new suspension bridge opened to replace the old truss bridge between Oakland the Yerba Buena Island.
On a gloomy Sunday in January, 2018, I decided to get out of the house for an adventure. After riding Caltrain from Redwood City to Santa Clara, I boarded a Capitol Corridor train to Jack London Square in Oakland. I wandered the farmer’s market there looking at all kinds of goodies before boarding the San Francisco Bay Ferry to San Francisco. I strolled the Embarcadero, ate lunch at a nice restaurant and then hurriedly walked a mile to the Caltrain station to make the 3:37pm departure for home.
Here’s a few interesting facts about the Bay Bridge. When originally opened, the upper deck handled two-way car traffic while the lower deck handled trucks and buses in both directions. The lower deck also carried the Key System light rail traffic until its abandonment in 1960. The tracks also provided access to San Francisco for the Sacramento Northern Railroad and Southern Pacific interurban trains for a few years beginning in 1939.
Following the cessation of rail traffic in 1960, the bridge authority and California Department of Transportation began a project to convert the two decks to handle one-way traffic. In 1963 the reconfigured bridge opened to westbound traffic on the upper deck and eastbound traffic on the lower.
During the Loma Prieta earthquake in October, 1989, a section of the upper deck collapsed in the cantilevered eastern half of the bridge. The bridge was closed for only a month as crews worked 24 hours a day to restore the vital commuter link into San Francisco. In October, 2013, a new suspension bridge opened to replace the old truss bridge between Oakland the Yerba Buena Island.
