Tower Bridge (California)

95605 Sacramento, CA, USA (California)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The Tower Bridge is a vertical lift bridge across the Sacramento River. In 1982, the Tower Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Design

Tower Bridge was initially designed with a 52 ft (16 m) wide roadway with sidewalks, with single lanes for cars flanking a large 13-foot (4.0 m) center lane for trains.
The towers are 160 ft (49 m).
From east to west, the bridge consists of a 30 ft (9.1 m) long girder span,
a 167 ft (51 m) long eastern truss approach span,
the 209 ft (64 m) long central lift span,
a 193 ft (59 m) long western approach span and
four 34 ft (10 m) long girder spans.
With the draw up, there is 100 feet (30 m) of vertical clearance above high water with a 172-foot (52 m) wide navigation channel between the timber pier fenders.
Although the lift span weighs 1,150 short tons (1,040 t), the use of an equal amount of counterweights (located in each tower) means the span is operated with two relatively small 100-horsepower (75 kW) electric motors.

The bridge style represents a rare use of Streamline Moderne architectural styling in a lift bridge, making it an outstanding expression of the social and architectural climate of the period of construction. The lift span towers were sheathed in steel to streamline its appearance. The American Institute of Steel Construction gave the Tower Bridge an honorable mention for its Class B prize bridge award in 1935.

The first train had crossed the bridge on November 7, 1935. The Tower Bridge was the first vertical lift bridge in the California Highway System after it was formally accepted by the state on January 11, 1936.

The railroad tracks were removed in 1963. With the removal of the tracks, the roadway was restriped for four automobile lanes. However, due to the nearby railroad tracks that pass by the bridge, the grade crossing before the bridge on the Capitol Mall side is designed to act as a secondary barrier to prevent vehicular traffic from entering the bridge while raising or lowering. When the bridge's warning siren sounds, the crossing activates to block traffic until the bridge is safe to cross again.

2007 revitalization

Currently, the bridge is used for pedestrian and vehicle traffic only. In 2007, regional transportation agencies were considering the possibility of adding trolley traffic across the bridge.

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