Thursday, April 8, 2010

California Bridges - San Mateo Creek Bridge

San Mateo Creek Bridge (also called the Eugene A. Doran Memorial Bridge)is a five span continuous steel girder bridge on sculptural, two column bents. The bridge spans over the creek, over Crystal Springs Road, and over a lot of valley oaks.

This bridge was designed in 1970 by Bob Cassano who was a Caltrans engineer and a really nice guy. I remember when he retired (as Caltrans Chief Bridge Engineer) in 1988, he went around the design floor, shaking everybody's hand, and saying a personal goodbye.

In those days Caltrans had a dozen design branches and a half dozen architects to help the engineers work on their bridges' appearance. As I've mentioned before, I really like unusual bridge supports and these bents are exceedingly strange, like four pairs of woolen dress slacks.  They don't seem to have any relationship to the girders or the bridge deck, but that's okay. They're like giant non sequiturs, making the landscape come alive with comical possibilities.
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California Bridges - San Mateo Creek Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

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