WILDCAT CREEK PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE - DESIGN FOR SAFETY

The Wildcat Creek Regional Trail will ultimately form a spoke connecting the San Francisco Bay Trail, which rings the Bay shoreline, with the Ridge Trail, which traverses the hills behind Oakland and Berkeley. The East Bay Regional Park District owns and operates many segments of this vast system of trails in the eastern half of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Wildcat Creek and Ridge Trails. A pedestrian bridge consisting of a symmetrical 436 m long continuous prestressed concrete structure in a coiled plan layout, with seven (7) major spans and proportionally smaller approach spans at each end, all without joints, has been designed to cross over two major railroad lines. The recreational trail corridor and the bridge, in conjunction with the restoration of the creek, serve as a strong impetus for urban redevelopment of the area. This paper discusses unusual safety and maintenance issues which constrained the design. (A) For the covering abstract see ITRD E121600.