First northern California open road tolling starts at Benicia Bridge

The new 5-lane northbound Benicia-Martinez toll bridge on I-680 northeast of San Francisco is opening this weekend along with a new toll plaza. The plaza located on the south side in Martinez tolls northbound. It has two lanes of open road electronic tolling plus six stop-to-pay cash lanes that are also equipped for the FasTrak, California-brand transponders. Carpools or HOVs go toll-free in California so they have a bypass lane.

Motorists are apparently taking well to the open road toll lanes, the first in Northern California. Some distance back from the toll plaza on a 5-lane approach traffic is directed into one HOV lane on the left, two open road toll lanes in the center and two cash lanes on the right.

Open road toll lanes in California are being signed FasTrak Express. Regular toll lanes are Cash/FasTrak because all lanes are wired for transponders.

As motorists approach the plaza area it bellies out and the dominant feature is the canopy with an attractive sweeping curve in plan and an inward sloping front face. The attractive organic design was reportedly inspired by local landforms along the strait. Colors are weathered copper and a muddy green. Tasteful modern design.

There is a utility and personnel tunnel under the toll booths with stairs to each booth, which is fully airconditioned.

The toll plaza and operations building cost $19m.

ACS does toll systems work for Caltrans/BATA.

The designers have used large areas of striped-off pavement or buffer zone rather than concrete barrier to separate stopping from open road toll traffic. (It wouldn't work on the east coast where many drivers don't take much notice of pavement markings!)

The 1.9km (1.2mi) bridge over the Carquinez Strait, a northern arm of San Francisco Bay and a waterway in to the port of Sacramento is known as the Second Benicia-Martinez Bridge. The first bridge a 3+3 lane deck truss structure goes back to 1962, though it was widened in 1991. For the moment the bold bridge will run southbound traffic on its existing three southbound lanes but the median will soon be removed and the bridge repaved for 4 travel lanes south plus breakdown shoulder and space for bicycles and walkers.

Traffic on the bridge is an average of around 100k/day.

The old toll plaza on the north side in Benicia had nine toll lanes and evolved as a staggered design with two small satellite plazas of two lanes each. It took its last tolls Friday morning and will now be demolished.

The toll, as before, is $4.00 for cars.

New bridge a struggle

Construction of the new bridge began in late 2001 and was due for completion by the end of 2004. However contractors had major problems and the project has run 30 months over schedule and gone well over budget. Final cost was $1.2b for a project costed in 1995 at $286m.

Pilings were complicated by very soft rock conditions under the strait and the handling of caissons used for the foundations. Environmentalists managed to forced the bridge builders to use a relatively untried air bubble curtain around the site of pile driving to reduce the hazard to fish from shock waves.

The bridge approaches and side spans were the typical cumbersome Caltrans design employing hundreds of carpenters for years to build temporary wooden formwork for poured-in-place reinforced concrete. The formwork is built on top of a maze of temporary steel pipes braced with thousands of steel cables. It all gets taken down almost as soon as it is erected!

Longer spans were built with traveling formwork cantilevered out over the water. Structurally the new bridge is haunched (slightly arched) concrete box girder construction with a dense matrix of rebar and a lightweight concrete mix. There are ten spans over water with the longest about 200m (656ft).

Including approaches the bridge is 2680m (8790ft) long and 25.5m (83.5ft) wide. The deck provides five 3.6m (11.8ft) travel lanes and two 3m (10ft) shoulder lanes.

To handle the extra lanes the I-680/I-780 interchange on the north side of the bridge had to be rebuilt. That involved major bridging too.

Five lanes on the bridge northbound make the split in traffic I-680/I-780 easier for motorists. The merge to 4 lanes on the northside occurs before the bridge so 4 lanes southbound are considered sufficient. That matches I-680 going south.

Bridge construction was managed by Caltrans but the bridge is financed and operated by the Bay Area Toll Authority. Prime contractor was a joint venture of CC Myers and Kiewit.

By resolution of the California legislature the Bridge is officially the George Miller Jr Bridge after the Democrat congressman of that name. But in popular parlance it is likely to remain the Benecia-Martinez or simply the Benecia Bridge.

The old 3+3 lane structure was a major bottleneck so there is much celebration in the area at the improved traffic conditions from the extra bridge lanes and the open road toll collection.

BATA has a neat visualization video at http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/projects/new_benicia.htm

BACKGROUND: Open road tolling is common at new toll bridges. Washington state's Tacoma Narrows Bridge which opened a new span with a toll plaza has two open road toll lanes also, and five cash lanes. But few existing bridges have had open road tolling retrofitted. It is difficult to safely incorporate it into toll plaza approaches designed for stop-to-pay tolling. The Port Authority NYNJ has retrofitted open road tolling at the Outerbridge Crossing NY-NJ. It plans open road tolling on the new Goethals bridge.

For old bridges the most feasible route is likely to be complete abolition of cash collection and highway speed tolling only - with video supplementing transponders. PANYNJ is doing a major study of that for its big bridges and tunnels including the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-08-25