BAY BRIDGE (BCN) -- The Bay Area Toll Authority voted today to spend $1.3 million to study the possibility of having bicycle lanes across the entire length of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Plans already call for the new eastern span of the bridge, which is scheduled to open in 2013, to have bike lanes from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island.
But there currently are no plans go have bike lanes on the western span of the Bay Bridge between Treasure Island and downtown San Francisco.
The bridge is 8.25 miles long and the western section constitutes about five miles of that distance.
The Bay Area Toll Authority is a sister agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the Bay Area, and administers auto tolls on the Bay Area's seven state-owned toll bridges.
The study received preliminary approval from the authority's Oversight Committee two weeks ago and received final approval from its full board today.
The study is expected to take about 18 months and entails having T.Y. Lin International, a San Francisco-based civil and structural engineering firm, look at the feasibility of having bike lanes on the western section.
MTC spokesman John Goodwin said transportation officials didn't include bike lanes for the western section in their plans to seismically upgrade the Bay Bridge because the cost seemed too high.
He said a 2001 study by the California Department of Transportation concluded it would cost between $160 million and $390 million to have bicycle lanes on the western section.
Goodwin said the new study will take a closer look at designs for bike lanes and prepare more detailed engineering and cost estimates to make the project eligible for funding.
The study will also look at how the bike lanes could connect safely from the deck on the western side of the span to San Francisco's street system in the Rincon Hill area, Goodwin said.
The study will be paid for with toll bridge rehabilitation funds, according to Goodwin.
(Copyright 2009, Bay City News, All rights reserved.)