Progress has been slow in tearing down the original eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which is over budget and also has protected cormorants roosting on it. Inertia is creeping in, and the longer it sits there, the greater the chances the defunct bridge might end up aging in place.
While the proposal for a bike-and-pedestrian lane all the way across the Bay speeds ahead, one idea for the old bridge’s support piers, as SFGate reported on Friday, is to turn them into some kind of park to commemorate the old bridge.
To be clear, this isn’t necessarily going to be an elevated promenade like New York’s High Line, because the roadbed is probably going to be removed no matter what. So this would probably be closer to Gas Works Park in Seattle. As the nearest access point to the existing 2.2-mile bike lane that runs from Oakland to just short of Yerba Buena Island is half a mile away, “Gateway Park” would effectively be a brand-new green-ish space, at the tip of the peninsula where the bridge hits land.
The conflict is that, over budget or not, the agencies involved have a contract stipulating that the bridge’s piers be removed down to the bay floor, and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission is adamant about keeping it that way, so the ones on land might be easier to retain. It’s not likely to save all that much money, around $15 million of the overall $6.4 billion budget, but one could make the case that leaving the trapezoidal concrete pillars intact might be less disruptive to the ecosystem than extracting them out of the muck and bedrock like giant teeth.
If even a fraction of them are left, the resulting line of non-load-bearing piers could be a ghostly, minimalist art piece on West Oakland’s waterfront. Future archaeologists could debate their intended purpose the way we contemplate Stonehenge. Or they could just attract barnacles and graffiti until rising sea levels drown them. Either way, let’s take a chance.
[Via SFGate; photo via Planetlight]