The Gateway to the Pacific, Behind Bars

Posted by: Avinash on Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Moving from the serious issues to the sublime, San Francisco has decided that they’re not going to handle you jumping off their landmarks anymore. You don’t like them? Well, too bad, you’re stuck walking on them!

An engineering study to test whether a suicide barrier could be built on the Golden Gate Bridge shows that it could be done in three ways without compromising the span’s safety, but it would change the way the iconic bridge looks.

Suicides — more than 1,250 since the bridge opened in 1937 — concern bridge officials, but so does the possibility that changes to the suspension structure could affect how it behaves in the wind, causing it to become unstable or even collapse. Aesthetics are another sticking point at the major tourist attraction and the world’s No. 1 suicide magnet.

In the eighth attempt to build a suicide barrier in the bridge’s history, wind tunnel tests by DMJM Harris of Oakland and West Wind Lab of Marina (Monterey County) showed that it is possible to add to the existing railing, replace the railing or build a net that juts out from the deck.

All options would require devices to reduce wind stress on the bridge. None of the options would interfere with a planned movable median barrier designed to prevent head-on collisions.

“You can think of a cross section of the bridge as an airplane wing, and if you change the flap, you change how it responds to wind,” said Denis Mulligan, chief engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

Personally, we think it’s a great idea . Because if people can’t jump off the Golden Gate, where oh where will they jump? Definitely no tall buildings or apartments or cliffs or boats anywhere in the Bay. Certainly no possible way for someone motivated enough to kill themselves to climb up there. This looks like a win-win for everyone, except for those poor Japanese tourists who have to waste their lovely Bay/Pacific views on grated walls. Too bad Japan, get your own bridge! Don’t make us come over there, you know what happened last time.

(95% of people seem to agree with the tourists. Why did they have to make such bloody good cameras?)

Suicide barrier is called feasible [SF Chronicle]
(Image from SF Chronicle)



Topics: Awesome, Bay Area, Society

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