Talk:San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge

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Featured article star San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 14, 2005.
This article is considered to fall outside the scope of the Version 0.5 test release, which is of limited size. It is now being held ready for a later version.

Contents

[edit] older entries

I have changed the infobox to the bridge one used elsewhere. What do you think? Also, the map is not needed now, since the new box has map links. --Jason McHuff 17:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think it looks just awful! There are huge white spaces when none existed previously. -- Samuel Wantman 22:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Well it is the one used by all of the other bridges. Honestly, I do see how it looks kind of jumbled and how having table boarders might be better. I just would like one standard table to be used for all bridges.
So...I changed the Template:Bridge by copying the style info from the template that was used. --Jason McHuff 00:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Things seem to be getting worse, not better. The layout looks bad, I don't understand why the pictures were rearranged. There are blobs of white space. Leonard G and I are not pleased. We just put a ton of work into bringing this article to featured status. I don't have the energy for a revert war, so I'm asking you to explain your changes, put them back the way they were, or fix it. -- Samuel Wantman 23:46, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

So a part of the improvement is to replace the PD Caltrans classic image with a picture of the ugly segment of the bridge? (I took this picture, BTW). The Bridge, Bridge2, and Bridge3 infoboxes are depreciated to be replaced with Infobox Bridge , so, REVERT! REVERT! REVERT! [;-) (but include intermediate edits). You might also want to see my talk with WB concerning the template - User talk:Leonard G.#Bridge (specific) infobox template - and the lengthly discussions that went into its construction. Since you are a registered user rather than an anon IP, I think it would be most appropriate for you to make this correction - in my opinion the changes are unjustifiable, but if you want to try justifying them, answer here. (Please do not take this as hostile, we need caring editors). - Leonard G. 03:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
P.S. All the other bridges are to be updated to the new infobox, want to help? - Leonard G. 04:03, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I went today to get an image layout fragment for another article - I just could not stand the uglyness. I thought jmchuff would have answered here by now, or done something. All is now back together as it should be, recent updates have been included. If anyone has the time this box should be used to replace any instances of bridge, bridge2, or bridge3 - note that the map is optional - if no map text info is included the row will not appear (thanks to WB for the neat css code enabling that). GGBr changed also. = Leonard G. 04:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Width and Vertical clearance

Why are the "Width" an "Vertical clearance" informations missing in the article? CG 15:15, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

I believe refers to the roadway width - sidewalks if present may be listed separately. I don't know how they measure railroad bridges. Vertical clearance appears to be for aircraft (?) since there is a separate entry for clearance under - perhaps user:Samuel Wantman would have better info, I think that it is his template that defines the taxobox. (Is clearance above surface, or what - these seem to be ill defied at present.)- Leonard G. 18:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
This information should be clarified. It is a shame to find a question mark in the beginning of a featured article. CG 19:44, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
I modified Template:Bridge to create the template used in this article. I was under the impression that Vertical clearance was for vehicles. I think Leonard is correct about the width. We should probably standardize the meanings of these things for all the bridge taxoboxes. Perhaps we can create a key and link all the terms. I was surprised that I couldn't find the information about these at Caltran's site. -- Samuel Wantman 05:53, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Better map?

It would be nifty if a better map could be posted, which showed people unfamiliar with the Bay Area where San Francisco and Oakland are located with respect to the bridge. Also, the current map doesn't clearly show Yerba Buena Island. -- Beland 04:14, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I can correct the map - by making the island out of scale, which is probably appropriate in this instance (the bridge line is much wider than the bridge would be at this scale, of course, which is why the island(s) would have to be also larger. - Leonard G. 03:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Photo of the whole bridge

Does anyone have a panormaic photo containing the whole bridge (both spans)? I think it would be nice to have a view of the complete bridge to get an idea of what the whole thing looks like at once. --Rc251 07:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a nice panoramic challenge to me. The problem is one of viewpoint. A view from the Angel Island would not be good since the eastern segment would angle sharply away from the viewer, and so the relative length would not bee obvious- better would be a viewpoint from the South, which essentially means a view from a boat on the bay, if both segments are to be in proper relative proportions. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a boat, but if anyone in the SF bay area would provide a boat (sail or power, I have enough experience to act as crew member), I would be delighted to take images and compose a panorama -Leonard G. 15:27, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Such a picture could probably be taken from the ferry that runs between Oakland and Alameda and San Francisco. 207.69.139.142 06:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I have noticed a "lemonparty" picture, but thankfully the vandal doesn't know how to show images and only the text appeared.


[edit] Base isolation?

ISTR the San Francisco Chronicle discussed how the western span's deck was lifted 1.5 inches to insert base isolaters, to further protect the deck from ground motion. As this seems not to be mentioned here, maybe it should be added.

[edit] Bay Bridge Troll

I've been given an image of the troll that was welded onto the bridge after the Loma Preita earthquake. I'm currently in the process of verifying when and by whom the image was taken, and should also have some more information on who actually built and/or welded the troll to the bridge (apparently it was done in secret so it will take some tracking down). In the next several weeks I hope to have some verifiable information about the troll, and to add it to the Bay Bridge page. In the meantime, this page seems to have some passionate editors so I thought I'd post the image here to see if this was of interest to the community. My source for the image is a boatworker on the San Francisco Bay and is a font of information about the Bridge, the Bay in general, and a host of other topics :) so I hope it will be of interest to you all. EricRodenbeck

Image:Bay bridge troll.jpg
Bay Bridge Troll
  • Sounds like an authentic part of history to me. --Treekids (talk) 02:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bridge toll

Obviously, 65 cents isn't modern day cash. Could someone add the 1936 tolls accounting for inflation? Thanks! Jm51 04:21, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bay crossings nav box

This navbox has upstream and downstream. This does not work for the Bay Bridge as both crossings are "upstream", one to the north and one to the south. -- Samuel Wantman 07:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Um. East and West you mean, surely. But yes, you have a point. --Treekids (talk) 02:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Earthquake error

The 'Richter scale' is obsolete terminology. This needs to be fixed, with a reference to the appropriate authority (probably United States Geological Survey). MWS 22 May 2006

[edit] New Bay Bridge

Info is needed on the new east span of the bay bridge. See http://www.newbaybridge.org/.

[edit] Held nomination from Version 0.5

This bridge is very notable, but it's not one of the top 5 or so super-famous bridges of the world. We'll renominate it for later versions, and it is likely to be included in those later releases. Walkerma 05:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link after toll

Should the link after the toll in the sidebar point to the DOT web page http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist4/tolls.htm (which gives specific tolls for a wider variety of times and vehicles) rather than to the FastTrac article that is pretty irrelevant to visitors? --Yonran 23:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other missing retrofit items

The West Span now has dampers to reduce movement.

The West Approach is being rebuilt. Temporary westbound lanes are now open, as of 9/1/06. This bridge is proably the best bridge ever !!

[edit] Why does the separate Eastern Span Replacement entry exist?

I asked this over on the Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge talk page too. Out of curiosity, why does that page exist? Much of the is here on the Bay Bridge page, which could certainly be expanded to include anything that is uniquely on the separate page.--Fizbin 13:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The article dates to the time that Leonard G and I were working on bringing this article to feature level. There was an objection to quantity of information about the eastern span replacement, so we decided to make a sub-article and just have a summary in the main article. Over time, people have tended to put more and more of the detailed information back into the main article, and not put it into the sub article. If all the information is combined into this article it would make this article much longer, with too much weight on the bridge replacement. A better tact would be to remove more of the details from this article and put them into the sub article. -- Samuel Wantman 23:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Container Ship Accident

Any thoughts on splitting this out into its own article? It looks as if this will be a major news story for some time, given the extent of the oil spill. Alternately, we could wait a few days/weeks to see if it dies down quicker than I expect. JavaTenor 20:22, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Train tracks

The article states that the train tracks were on the south side of the western span. I remember them being on the northwest side of the span, as I remember looking out the windows of the trains when we went from Oakland to San Francisco. Of course, my memory could be faulty after 50 years, but in the interest of accuracy, someone in the Bay Area might want to check in more detail (I'd do it myself, but I don't live in California anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Someonesdad363616 (talk • contribs) 00:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)