Contra Costa County, California Bridges: State Route 160 (Antioch) Bridge across the San Joaquin River (2)

February 2014 (38.02400, -121.75162) Antioch Bridge

The Antioch Bridge (28 0009) is a narrow, two lane toll bridge that carries State Route 160 across the San Joaquin River. It was built in 1978 with continuous steel girders. It's  a 40 span, 9440 ft long steel girder bridge with a 460 ft span across the shipping channel. In the photo above we can see how steeply the bridge rises to provide 140 ft of vertical clearance over the river. The bridge includes gates to stop traffic when the wind starts blowing. The toll plaza is on the opposite (west) side but one can avoid the toll altogether by driving across the river a little downstream on State Route 4.

This Caltrans bridge was designed by my boss Chuck Yakabe in the 1970s and the retrofit was completed last year by Kim Yong-Pil. It includes friction pendulum bearings just slightly higher than the existing bearings that can move 0.6 meters for the design earthquake. More information on the retrofit is available on the Internet.

Contra Costa County, California Bridges: State Route 160 (Antioch) Bridge across the San Joaquin River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.