San Diego-Coronado Bridge

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San Diego-Coronado Bridge

Carries	State Route 75
Crosses	San Diego Bay
Locale	San Diego, California and Coronado, California
Design	Prestressed concrete/steel bridge
Total length	3,407 meters (11,179 feet)
Clearance below	60.96 meters (200 feet)
Maps and aerial photos

The San Diego-Coronado Bridge, locally referred to as the Coronado Bridge, is a "prestressed concrete/steel" girder bridge, crossing over San Diego Bay in the United States, linking San Diego, California with Coronado, California. The bridge is signed as part of State Route 75.

[edit] Description

The 11,288-foot-long (3,407m) bridge ascends from Coronado at a 4.67 percent grade before curving 80 degrees toward San Diego. The span reaches a maximum height of 200 feet (61m), allowing the U.S. Navy ships which operate out of the nearby Naval Station San Diego to pass underneath it. The two Nimitz class aircraft carrier home-ported in San Diego, the Nimitz and the Reagan, are 201 feet high and tie up at Naval Air Station North Island, located between the bay entrance and the bridge. The five-lane bridge features the longest box girder in the world.

The Coronado Bridge opened in 1969, with a $1 toll collected for traffic going westbound to Coronado. In 2002, it became the last toll bridge in Southern California to discontinue tolls. Though tolls are no longer collected, the original toll booths remained intact for a short while. They were temporarily replaced with newer, more modern-looking toll booths for the filming of a car commercial in April 2007.

The bridge was designed entirely and exclusively for motor-vehicle traffic: there are no pedestrian walkways, bike paths, or shoulders ("breakdown lanes").

It is the third deadliest suicide bridge in the USA, trailing only the Golden Gate bridge [1] in San Francisco, CA, and the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, WA. Between 1972 and 2000, more than 200 suicides occurred on the bridge [2].

[edit] In popular culture

A view of the bridge from a commercial jet

Aside from gaining notoriety for giving birth to the world famous Chicano Park (located beneath the bridge), in the 1980s the bridge helped further San Diego's identity as a separate and distinct city from its northern neighbor of Los Angeles when it was used as the visual centerpiece of the opening credits for the hit television show Simon & Simon, whose characters were private detectives in San Diego.

Coronado Bridge also gained notoriety from the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), even though the scene was not filmed on the bridge, nor was it referenced as the "Coronado Bridge" in the movie. In the scene that takes place on the bridge, Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) throws a burrito out the window and hits a motorcyclist (Jack Black) who then crashes. Instead of causing further car accidents, the angered motorcyclist confronts Ron Burgundy and proceeds to drop kick Ron Burgundy's dog, Baxter, over the side of Queensway Bridge in Long Beach, California. Since another bridge is visible in the distance, it cannot be the Coronado Bridge.

The Coronado Bridge was also featured on the television show Veronica Mars as the location where main character Logan's mother Lynn (Lisa Rinna) commits suicide. It later was the location where Logan (Jason Dohring) was framed for murder.