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San Diego-Coronado Bridge
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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.
11,288-foot-long (3,407m or 2.1mi) 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.
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Encyclopedia
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.
Description
The 11,288-foot-long (3,407m or 2.1mi) 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 Nimitz class aircraft carriers currently home-ported in San Diego, are 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 Construction started in February 1967, and the bridge was opened to traffic on August 3, 1969 during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of San Diego , with a $1 toll collected for traffic going westbound to Coronado. It is designated and signed as part of California State Highway 75. In 2002, it became the last toll bridge in Southern California to discontinue tolls (though the bridge was supposed to become "toll-free" once the original bonds bridge was paid for (which occurred in 1986) the tolls continued for 16 additional years). 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 islands which the toll booths sat upon, as well as the canopy over the toll plaza area, are still intact (located at the western end of the bridge in the westbound lanes). As of February 19th, 2009 there was talk about starting up the west-bound toll collection again. The eastern end of the bridge connects directly to a T interchange with Interstate 5, just southeast of downtown San Diego, California.
The bridge was designed entirely and exclusively for motor-vehicle traffic: there are no pedestrian walkways, bike paths, or shoulders ("breakdown lanes"). On September 7, 2008, close to 2000 cyclists jumped at the chance of crossing the bridge on bike for the first time in two decades.
It is the third deadliest suicide bridge in the USA, trailing only the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, CA, and the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, WA. Between 1972 and 2000, more than 200 suicides occurred on the bridge .
In popular culture
Aside from 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.
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.
General Facts
- Principal architect: Robert Mosher
- Opened on August 3, 1969
- in 1970, it won the Most Beautiful Bridge Award from American Institute of Steel Construction
- 2.12 miles (11,179 feet) long
- cost $50 million to build
- retrofitting will cost $70-150 million
- 20,000 tons of steel (13,000 tons in structural steel and 7,000 in reinforcing steel)
- 94,000 cubic yards of concrete
- 900,000 cubic yards of dredged fill
- some caissons for the towers were drilled and blasted 100 feet into the bed of the San Diego Bay
- 4.67% grade from Coronado to San Diego
- side railings are concrete blocks only 34 inches high
- over 50 people work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to maintain the bridge and take its tolls
- the grade and the 90-degree angle turn is to create clearance for an empty aircraft carrier to pass beneath it
- the bridge is the third largest orthogonal box in the country - the box is the center part of the bridge, between piers 18-21 over main shipping channel
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