It was a risk for me
to text while driving on the Bay Bridge but I needed to let someone know about
the strange thing I’d just seen: a woman walking East on the bridge, on the
tiny strip of concrete not intended for pedestrian use. She hadn’t appeared
frantic but as I drove further East I got increasingly anxious for her. She’d soon enter the Yerba Buena
tunnel, and the sidewalk would ultimately recede, putting her right next to the
speeding cars. When my sister called the California Highway Patrol on my behalf,
they said the walker was news to them. It occurred to me that thousands of
other drivers must have seen her before I did. This was late Saturday
afternoon.
On Monday morning when
I woke up, I was still thinking about the walker. I put a call into the Oakland
CHP office. They reminded me that most of the bridge is located in San
Francisco County, so I reached out to the folks at the South of Market office. A
CHP employee–I’ll call her Ms. Carter–was happy to speak to me but she was
unwilling to provide information on any
bridge pedestrian unless I was a family member. Fair enough. I still wanted
more information so I asked hypothetical questions about what happens to
bridge-walkers once they’re picked up by CHP. Signs on the on-ramps seem to prohibit walking, but Ms. Carter said there is no set policy, and that
if someone’s car breaks down on the bridge, the CHP gives them a ride,
free-of-charge.
It was a busy weekend in San Francisco. I initially assumed
that the woman was a tourist and hadn’t known the danger of crossing the bridge
by foot. (Maybe she’d confused it for the Golden Gate?). When I saw her, she
was still close to the Financial District, and I didn’t see a broken-down car. She
could have been short on cash, simply trying to get home to Treasure Island or
the East Bay. And there’s always the possibility that she was being political.
Perhaps the Occupy Movement is not dead. This
is my bridge and I’m going to walk across it!
Though I knew Ms. Carter at the CHP wasn’t going to give me
any details on the walker–I wasn’t sure she’d even heard of her–she did tip me
off to something that hadn’t occurred to me; she said the woman could have been
trying to kill herself. I was shocked; I thought people only jumped off the
Golden Gate Bridge, which rises much higher over the Bay.
“If I’m not mistaken,” the CHP official went on to tell me,
“about as many people jump off the Bay Bridge as the Golden Gate.” I really don’t
think this is true, and if it is, I have yet to corroborate it.
On Sunday, my obsession with the bridge walker could have
been seen as voyeuristic. But now it seems to have grown into a larger public
safety question. I’ve heard that when the new eastern span opens up, we’ll be able to
walk and ride bikes on it. Unlike the Golden Gate Bridge, though, visitors to
the new span will have to park their cars very far away, making suicide
attempts less likely. And there’s the suggestion that the Bay Bridge doesn’t
have the same draw as the Golden Gate, the allure of jumping into the ocean.
This is all conjecture, though. We will have to wait until the new span opens
up to determine whether people–Bay Area residents and visitors alike–will want
to harm themselves on it. It will be interesting to see whether AB 755 passes
in the State Senate. Even if it does, my guess is that suicide barriers can’t
be made retroactive.
I will be thinking about the bridge walker for some time.
Had my sister not called the CHP, it’s not clear how or when the woman would
have been discovered. Unlike the Golden Gate, no one patrols the Bay Bridge
looking for the vulnerable, talking some 80 people out of suicide every year. Let’s
hope such a thing is never needed.
POSTSCRIPT –
It has been ten days since I saw the bridge walker.
Yesterday, it was announced that the Bay Bridge wouldn’t open Labor Day weekend
as planned but will be delayed several months due to some broken bolts.
Not long ago, someone asked me what I obsess about, and how it relates to my
writing. These days, I am very interested in how we respond to danger and loss, and how related stories play out in public spaces.
Mookie's Food Odyssey is often a place for me to obsess about food, but as someone trying to write fiction I must obsess about people as well.
Thank you for reading my non-food post!
-Mookie
