The San Mateo–Hayward Bridge (commonly called the San Mateo Bridge) is a bridge crossing the American state of California's San Francisco Bay, linking the San Francisco Peninsula with the East Bay. The bridge's western end is in Foster City, a suburb on the eastern edge of San Mateo. The eastern end of the bridge is in Hayward. It is the longest fixed-link bridge in California and the 25th longest in the world by length. The bridge is owned by the state of California, and is maintained by California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the state highway agency. Further oversight is provided by the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA).
The bridge is part of State Route 92 (SR 92), whose western terminus is at the city of Half Moon Bay on the Pacific coast. It links Interstate 880 (I-880) in the East Bay with U.S. Route 101 (US 101) on the peninsula. It is roughly parallel to, and lies between, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Dumbarton Bridge.
History and description
1929 original bridge
The San Francisco Bay Toll-Bridge Company issued $4.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) in bonds to raise a portion of the estimated $7.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) budget required to build the first bridge. First-year operating revenues were anticipated to be $868,469 (equivalent to $ in ), but the original bridge lost money in its first year of operation.
The original bridge, known as the San Francisco Bay Toll Bridge, opened on March 2, 1929 after about a year of construction. It was a privately owned venture and was then the longest bridge in the world. Most of the original bridge was a causeway trestle 27 feet wide, with five truss spans in the center incorporating a vertical lift over the main shipping channel. Clearance when the lift was down to allow road traffic over the bridge was , and clearance with the lift up to allow marine traffic to pass the bridge was .
The original drawbridge played a minor role in the history of the Stanford Axe. When Stanford students stole the Axe back from Cal in April 1930, the getaway car was presumed to be traveling the shortest route, which would be over the bridge, and pursuing Cal students gave chase. The operator on duty, who was a graduate student at Stanford, learned that Cal students were causing the increased traffic in pursuit of the Axe, so he raised the draw and stopped traffic. In fact, the getaway car was traveling back to Palo Alto via San Jose.
Although the initial press was favorable, daily traffic fell from the opening months and never exceeded 2,000 cars per day until 1947. The State of California purchased the bridge on September 12, 1951, for $6,000,000 (equivalent to $ in ). By 1955, traffic exceeded 9,000 cars per day, and in 1957, traffic was stopped an average of six times per day to allow ship traffic to pass the bridge. The bridge originally had pole lights along the entire stretch, which were later abandoned except over the vertical lift span. Traffic on the bridge increased from 3,000 cars per day in 1929 to 56,000 cars per day in 1968. Before the new bridge was complete, California put the original truss spans up for sale in 1965, with the buyer obligated to remove all five truss spans after completion of the 1967 bridge.
1967 orthotropic bridge
With increased road and marine traffic, a bill was introduced in 1961 by State Senator Richard J. Dolwig to fund a new fixed high-level bridge to replace the 1929 lift-bridge. The modern span, which began construction on July 17, 1961, opened for traffic in 1967 at a cost of $70,000,000 (equivalent to $ in ). The originally designed upgrade would retain the existing lift span (along with the attendant delays due to passing ship traffic), adding a second deck to the truss spans and widening the existing trestles to four lanes, but the California Toll Bridge Authority added $30,000,000 (equivalent to $ in ) to the project budget in September 1961 to replace the existing lift span with a fixed high-level double-deck span, which would have been similar in appearance to the nearby 1956 Richmond–San Rafael Bridge.
By that time, prior phases of the project had already been awarded to relocate the toll plaza from San Mateo to Hayward on new fill and bids were taken for the new eastern trestle, with trestle construction awarded to Peter Kiewit Sons'. The finished single-deck design was not finalized until January 1962, with work initially estimated to complete in 1965.
The new span won two prizes in 1968: an ASCE Award for Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement and an American Institute of Steel Construction long-span prize bridge award.