Forget the Golden Gate, these 18 San Francisco bridges have ‘major defects’

Major Bay Area bridges are safe from the kind of catastrophe seen in Tuesday’s tragic container ship crash into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, according to local officials. But there are 18 listed bridges and overpasses within San Francisco that federal officials have rated as poor.

Poor ratings for components are described as components with “widespread moderate or isolated major defects; strength and/or performance of the component is affected,” according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

However, the “poor” rating isn’t the lowest on the inventory’s classification list. A component can also be rated as “serious,” “critical,” “imminent failure,” or “failed.”

With a 27-foot-thick concrete fender filled with sand, the Golden Gate Bridge has the most robust ship collision protection of any bridge on the West Coast, according to the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. 

The Bay Bridge should be able to withstand a ship traveling at the same speed as the cargo vessel involved in the Baltimore incident, Caltrans spokesperson Bart Ney told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“What we’ve seen is that our bridges do more damage to vessels than the vessels do to bridges,” Ney said.

The 18 San Francisco bridges rated “poor” by the FHWA are: 

All 18 are in the city’s southern neighborhoods, along the Highway 101/Interstate 280 corridor. Most are made of concrete and built in the early to mid-1960s. One bridge, the county-owned Islais Creek Bridge, is the only one that extends over water. 

The Department of Public Works calls the current state of the Islais Creek Bridge “structurally deteriorated and seismically deficient.” A $60 million plan to replace the bridge is already underway. Still, work isn’t expected to begin until 2026 and will cause major transit disruptions on Muni’s T-Third light rail line through the Bayview and Dogpatch neighborhoods. 

The poorly rated bridges are mostly Caltrans’ responsibility. The agency was contacted for comment on plans to update the crossings but did not respond by publication time. Caltrain were also contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.

"Union Pacific's bridges are inspected a minimum of twice annually by one of 29 specially-trained two-person bridge inspection teams, exceeding federal requirements," a spokesperson for the railroad said. "Bridges that are less than 10 years old and have no defects are inspected once annually."

Condition ratings for bridges are established by reviews of bridge components, including everything from the deck and railings to bridge bearings, joints and substructure, according to federal specifications. The condition ratings indicate the existing conditions of a bridge and the area around it.

In addition to the bridge’s structural components, the review also includes the roadway connected to the bridge, the soil surrounding a bridge's foundation, and its vulnerability to earthquakes.

In November 2007, the container ship Cosco Busan struck a fender protecting one of the piers on the western span of the Bay Bridge in heavy fog while departing the Port of Oakland. The collision ripped a huge gash in the ship's hull, causing 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel to spill into the bay. It also severely damaged the bridge’s fender, which had to be repaired.

John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Bay Area Toll Authority, pointed to the Cosco Busan incident as the closest local analogy to the Baltimore bridge strike.

"We had a real close call in 2007. Thank God for the integrity of the bumper system on that pier of the Bay Bridge," Goodwin said. 

From 1960 to 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, with a total of 342 people killed, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Eighteen of those collapses happened in the United States.