Snapshots - A Public Works Podcast

Snapshots is a new podcast series from San Francisco Public Works. Spend a few minutes to get a snapshot of who we are and what we do to keep San Francisco clean, green, safe and resilient. With a workforce of 1600+ people, we may not always have the opportunity to cross paths, but maybe this will help bring us closer together.

• Meet Michael Gonzalez, one of our newest plumbers. Tune in to hear about the mystery his team faced at the Animal Shelter.
• Logan Hehn works in the Director's Office. Hear about the horsepower it takes to get us into our new office building at 49 South Van Ness.
• Meet Tessa Jones, a supervisor with our Street Environmental Services Bureau, who is a veteran on the front lines to keep the streets of San Francisco clean. She shares an experience she had at work that has impacted her life to this day.
• Melina Markarian is an architectural associate with our Bureau of Architecture. Hear about her favorite project and what life is like working from home.
• Meet Alex Murillo, our construction outreach manager with the public affairs team. Hear three sounds that can signify good news or bad.
• Some of the many people behind the scenes are from our finance team. Meet one of them, Elizabeth Ramos, who manages funding for our capital projects. 
• Thomas Roitman is a project manager with our Infrastructure team. Hear about the bridges he's crossed. 

Articles

A Bridge Comes Down - Stand at the corner of Geary and Steiner streets and look up. The skyline today is different than it had been for the past 58 years. Missing is the pedestrian bridge that spanned the busy six-lane roadway. Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, demolition crews removed the bridge over Geary Boulevard  – slab by slab – in a methodical operation that involved cranes, excavators, blow torches, crowbars and engineering know-how. Taking down the first of three slabs, which weighed in at 70,000 pounds, brought a little drama to the scene, when it wouldn’t budge right away from where it had been nestled for nearly six decades. The crews first tried pulling it from the top, then pushing it from the bottom, until finally it came loose, and the crane could swing it safely away to the flatbed truck nearby. The engineers who were on hand watched each move with a mix of excitement, curiosity, nervousness, and, finally, relief. It’s not every day a bridge is demolished in San Francisco. In all, crews took down 165 feet of bridge span and 222 feet of ramp. Several Public Works teams were involved in the bridge-removal project: Project Management, Construction Management, Structural Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Regulatory Affairs, Site Assessment and Remediation and Public Affairs. We also served as project engineer. The project is part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s larger Geary Rapid Project, which aims to improve bus service and pedestrian safety on the Geary corridor between Stanyan and Market streets. The existing street-level crossing at the Geary-Steiner intersection will be upgraded to improve pedestrian safety with high-visibility crosswalks, mid-crossing islands, bulb-outs to shorten the crossing distance and retimed traffic signals. The pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco came out in support of removing the bridge. “So why is Walk SF cheering on the demolition of a pedestrian-only space?” the organization wrote in a blog post. “Well, in addition to this particular bridge failing ADA standards, pedestrian bridges typically don’t make streets safer. They keep streets fast and dangerous and give the message that streets are (for) cars first, people last.”

Third Street Bridge Rises Again - San Francisco Public Works recently completed a two-year, $27 million rehabilitation and renovation project on the historic Third Street Bridge, also known as the Lefty O’Doul Bridge. This iconic bascule bridge connecting China Basin and Mission Bay was designed by Joseph Strauss and opened to the public on May 12, 1933. Strauss was also the chief engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, which began construction earlier that year on January 5, 1933. Over the past 87 years, the Third Street Bridge has undergone some minor upgrades, including replacement of the original timber roadway with a steel open-grid deck in the 1950s and the addition of steel plates for pedestrians to safely walk across the span in the 1990s. But for the most part, the historic span has retained its original design and appearance. A combination of age, sun exposure, fog, tidal salt water spray and vehicular and boat collisions had deteriorated the paint and steel structure of the Depression-era bridge. A major rehabilitation was needed to extend the life of this vital piece of infrastructure connecting South of Market to the fast-growing Mission Bay neighborhood. American Bridge Company performed the rehabilitation work, which began in October 2018 and reached substantial completion in March 2020. Construction activity was sequenced in phases to allow pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles to continue to use the bridge for all major events at Oracle Park and Chase Arena. We worked closely with the San Francisco Giants and the Golden State Warriors to minimize disruptions. Previous rehabilitation work on the bridge that involved counterweight concrete repairs and restoration was done by Cal State Erectors between December 2017 and January 2018. The most recent work included replacing the custom open-grid road deck and timber walkways; replacing the corroded rivets, steel beams and truss members; sandblasting the entire bridge to bare metal; and applying a fresh coat of black paint. Additional rehabilitation work included retrofitting the timber fender pile system; refurbishing the motors and components that control the draw span; and installing new pedestrian and traffic safety barriers to facilitate continued full operability of the drawbridge for maritime traffic to pass through the channel. The Third Street Bridge Rehabilitation project recently won the San Francisco Public Works Project Team of the Year Award. “We are grateful to have partnered these past two years with American Bridge Company to restore this iconic San Francisco landmark,” said Third Street Bridge Project Manager Jacky Ng. “There were many unexpected challenges that came up throughout the project and I’m proud of our team for rising to the occasion to complete these vital structural renovations. I also want to thank neighbors for their patience and understanding during construction.  This important project will ensure that the Lefty O’Doul Bridge will continue to serve San Francisco for many more years to come.” Additional project information can be found here.

Wildflower Oasis - It took about 1 ½ pounds of wildflower seeds to transform an empty City-owned lot in the Western Addition into a pollinator garden alive with living color and the flutter of bees and butterflies. The 1,200-square foot garden at 1353 Turk St. sits tucked between a modern apartment complex and the historic Fillmore Muni substation that once powered streetcars in the western half of the City. Until mid-February, the lot was covered in gravel, weeds and litter. Volunteers and our gardeners, led by Brian Lease, from our Bureau of Urban Forestry, covered the ground with cardboard to keep the weeds at bay, and layered that with clean soil before scattering the mix of 11 varieties of native coastal California wildflower seeds, including lupine, California poppies, clarkia and yarrow. A bit of hand-watering at the start, and rains from the skies in March, let the wildflower seeds do what they’re meant to do: turn into flowers. A rainbow of purple, pink, yellow and orange blooms emerged, just in time for spring. It didn’t take long for the butterflies and bees to arrive, moving from one blossom to the next. The pollinator garden, found behind a tall fence made of thin black bars, is easy to pass by without noticing it. But it’s a hidden gem worth looking for, bringing a welcome touch of nature into a dense urban neighborhood.

Public Works Steps Up During COVID Crisis - More than two months after the COVID-19 public health emergency landed in San Francisco, Public Works employees remain on the front lines responding to the pandemic. This past month, our work focused extensively on the opening of safe sleeping sites where unhoused residents can put up tents in designated spaces set at least six feet apart, with access to toilets, showers, fresh water, garbage pickup and charging stations. Nonprofits provide security and meals. The first opened on Fulton Street between the Main Library and the Asian Art Museum where a sprawling, unsanctioned encampment had sprouted without proper services and basic hygiene. The second is located at the site of a former McDonald’s at Haight and Stanyan streets across from Golden Gate Park. Public Works painters, electricians and plumbers worked to get the safe sleeping sites set up, marking off individual tent sites and hooking up water and power. Our construction management team from the Building, Design and Construction Division helped get the projects off the ground, and our street cleaning and landscape crews pitched in. We also helped set up a smaller site with designated tent spaces in a parking lot at 180 Jones Street in the Tenderloin. Our crews go through there regularly to keep the area clean. Other safe sleeping sites are in the works. In addition, the department has been working to expand the number of staffed Pit Stop public toilets that are open around the clock. As essential workers, the everyday work of Public Works employees continues, from filling potholes and responding to tree emergencies to cleaning the streets and designing and managing capital improvement projects. We also have a large contingent deployed to the City’s Emergency Operations Center and have been involved in the development of policies to help restaurants and retail establishments operate safely as shelter-in-place restrictions that went into effect March 17 are slowly eased. As the crisis continues, Public Works will remain ready to take on the quick-changing demands to help keep San Francisco safe. We will get through this, together.

Going Green to Manage Stormwater - Construction is wrapping up on the Baker Beach Green Streets Project along Camino Del Mar, Sea Cliff Avenue and the 25th Avenue entrance to Baker Beach that aims to beautify the neighborhood and better manage stormwater before it enters the City’s combined sewer/stormwater system. The project includes the creation of rain gardens, installation of pervious concrete along the parking lanes and construction of a new eco-friendly underground stormwater storage system. The improvements, which fall within the Richmond watershed, will handle some 2.6 million gallons of stormwater a year, reducing stress on the sewer system, helping to prevent localized flooding and reducing the likelihood of sewer discharge at Baker Beach during heavy rains. The landscape elements also provide habitat for wildlife. Due to the project's location either directly on or adjacent to Golden Gate National Recreation Area land, all the plants for the project were grown by the Presidio/GGNRA nursery from seed that was sourced directly from native species along this part of San Francisco’s coastline. The project is a partnership with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, the National Park Service and San Francisco Public Works. Public Works landscape architects and hydraulics engineers performed the detailed design and assisted with construction support. Our streets and highways and structural engineering teams also were involved. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission managed the project and construction. The Baker Beach Green Streets Project in the Seacliff neighborhood is one of eight demonstration green infrastructure projects to manage stormwater in San Francisco.

Crews Tackle Tons of Trash - Seven workers, four hours, 6,500 pounds. Those are the numbers that start to tell the story of a cleanup adjacent to the Hunters Point Expressway near Candlestick Point. The Memorial Day bayside operation netted tons of waste – from discarded tires and wooden pallets to soiled clothing and empty food containers. The crews worked under a blazing sun to get the area back in shape. It was just one operation out of dozens a day our street cleaners power through to take care of San Francisco.