California's Bridges: Benicia-Martinez Bridges across the Carquinez Straits (5)

1999 (38.043 deg, -122.122 deg.) Benicia-Martinez Bridges

Well, this is my best photo of the Benicia-Martinez Railway Bridge (owned by the Union Pacific Railroad). You can see that this photo was taken before the segmentally-constructed highway bridge was built to the east. Its amazing that this old railway bridge (from 1930) stands between an expensively retrofit and an expensive new highway bridge. The railroads are run by a tough bunch of business-people who guard their rights zealously. Whenever we want to build anything near their right-of-way they drive a very hard bargain.

Despite its fragile appearance, the railway bridge does carry a couple dozen trains every day. I do recall the railway bridge had some damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I believe there is a lift span at the center of the bridge, but I can't recall if it ever is opened.

California's Bridges: Benicia-Martinez Bridges across the Carquinez Straits (5) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.