Victims of head-on collisions want a movable divider,
but it's a difficult engineering job.
By
Eric Brazil and George Raine
THE EXAMINER STAFF
Once again, in the wake of a fatal collision and traffic
pileup, the Golden Gate Bridge district and its critics
are arguing about a barrier that would prevent head-on collisions
on the span. San Francisco psychologist Tamar Kraut's death
in Monday's head-on crash, which injured four other people
and snarled traffic for 31/2 hours, was the 34th fatality
on the bridge since 1970. The accident, according to witnesses,
was caused when Joseph Cowan, 56, of Novato, veered into
southbound traffic while trying to pass cars headed north.
"How many
more people will be killed before we get some action?"
said, Frank Schweiger of San Anselmo-Director of Citizens
For a Safe Golden Gate Bridge , who narrowly escaped death
in a 1984 head-on crash that left him permanently disabled.
"We can put men on the moon and go to the bottom of
the sea, but we can't put a movable barrier on the Golden
Gate Bridge," said Mr. Robert M. Guernsey, also of
San Anselmo, who has patented a movable barrier for the
Golden Gate Bridge, but can't get the bridge district to
agree to use one. The bridge's engineers and directors have
been mulling over the barrier problem for 20 years and have
considered several models.
San Diego bridge
has one chief engineer Merv Giacomini said designing a movable
traffic barrier for the Golden Gate was a formidable engineering
problem. The bridge's narrowness-six lanes confined in a
space of 62 feet -imposes rigid constraints for the design
of a barrier, which must be movable to accommodate the commuter
traffic. A movable barrier designed by Barrier Systems Inc.
of Carson City, Nev., is in place on the San Diego Coronado
bridge, which is also 62 feet wide. But that bridge, Giacomini
said, has just five lanes, and "there's not enough
room for that system on the Golden Gate." Barrier Systems
is working on a narrower design, but no one seems to know
when a prototype will be ready, what it will cost or whether
it will pass crash tests and traffic analysis.
San Francisco
Supervisor Angela Alioto said she had run out of patience
with the district. "Engineering-off-peak wise, with
these deaths, that excuse won't work," she said. "We've
got to do something." Alioto's suggestion: Create an
unused buffer lane 24 hours a day, instead of the present
practice of keeping a lane open only during off-peak hours.
If the change slows commuter traffic, "too bad,"
she said.
Impractical,
Hsieh says San Francisco Supervisor Tom Hsieh, an architect
who served on the bridge district's board from 1989 to 1992,
said installing a barrier or adding a new deck wasn't practical.
A barrier would produce gridlock and long waits to approach
the bridge, Hsieh said. A second deck would be prohibitively
expensive and add weight to the structure, which already
needs a seismic retrofit that the bridge district is struggling
to finance.
"The bridge's
primary duty-priority one--is to withstand a major seismic
activity," Hsieh said.,
Robert M. Guernsey, 48, Frank Schweiger, 58, and MS. Danna
Kirkbride, 48, of San Rafael-who lost a knee and suffered
brain damage in a 1977 head-on bridge collision-led an effort
this spring to place an initiative on the Marin County ballot
calling on the Board of Supervisors to look into the feasibility
of a movable barrier. It narrowly failed to receive enough
signatures.
Now, they are
trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get the board to hand-out
a commuters survey bridge users at toll booths about their
attitudes toward a traffic barrier committee and whether
they would exchange speed for safety. (View questionnaire
survive)
Popup movable
traffic barrier; Robert M. Guernsey intends to make a new
pitch to the bridge district's board Friday for his patented
idea for a popup Retractable Delineator Barrier, which he
said would only take up just 6 inches of the bridge's roadway
width. Giacomini said Guernsey's design compromised the
bridge's structural integrity and didn't comply with the
federal and industry performance criteria from the Cal-Trans
bridge design specifications section on a bicycle railing
& a pedestrian hand railing.
Eric Schmidt,
a Tiburon lawyer and former boat builder, tried for eight
years to persuade the bridge district to consider his "Simplex
Movable Barrier" design. He believes the board's mind
has been closed since a 1985 study by Northwestern University's
Traffic Institute concluded that the movable barrier problem
was insoluble given the state of technology and the physical
constraints of the bridge. "Maybe I haven't done it,
but by God there can be one made," he said.
Investigation
could take days; California Highway Patrol spokesman Terry
Sims said the investigation of the accident would take several
days to complete. "We want to find out the driving
actions of Mr. Cowan before and after the accident,"
Sims said.; Department of Motor Vehicles records show that
Cowan, a retired UC San Francisco Medical Center executive,
was involved in a Dec. 7, 1994, accident in Novato and a:
Dec. 30,1995, mishap in San Rafael.
Kraut, Monday's
victim, had a private practice in psychology in San Francisco
but also worked full time as an executive of a managed health
care company in San Rafael, Foundation Health Psych-care
Services. Monday, she left work early to keep a dental appointment
in San Francisco. The CHP's Sims asks that any witnesses
to the bridge crash contact him at (415) 9241100. Two victims
of accidents on the Golden Gate Bridge are joined by the
designer of a bridge barrier. From left to right are designer
Robert M. Guernsey, Danna Kirkbride and Frank Schweiger.
|
