Sixty-eight years of Bay Bridge Non-Motorized Advocacy

History

The Bay Bridge, opened to traffic in 1936, was a glorious engineering achievement. Unfortunately it was built with a major design flaw - no accommodation was made for bicycle and pedestrian traffic, such as on the popular twin pathways of the Golden Gate Bridge. Between 1936 and 1959, autos were limited to 6 lanes on the upper deck, with intercity and regional rail sharing the lower deck with truck traffic. Between 1959 and 1963, General Motors, other auto industry companies and local traffic engineers succeeded in eliminating the rails and opening up ten lanes to general automobile traffic, in line with a coordinated destruction of urban rail systems all around the Country.

Bay Area residents pushing for non-motorized access on the Bay Bridge is nothing new. On opening day in 1936, thousands of pedestrians walked onto the bridge from San Francisco, despite police efforts to hold them back. This demand for equal access to publicly funded transportation facilities continues to this day, as cyclists regularly protest the auto-only restrictions on the bridge, by rallying at the onramps to the Bay Bridge, and occasionally riding across illegally as a statement that cyclists and pedestrians should be legal and legitimate users of the public right of way.