San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to close for Labor Day weekend

If you’re planning on being in the San Francisco Bay Area this Labor Day weekend, don’t plan on crossing to or from the East Bay by the Bay Bridge — it’s going to be shut down. The nation’s third busiest bridge is undergoing construction of historic proportions.

Starting at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday Sept. 3, the bridge will be closed to all traffic — eastbound and westbound — so construction crews can remove a 300-foot-long, double-deck section of the bridge. It will be replaced with a new half-mile-long detour that will connect the East Span with the Yerba Buena Tunnel. The old section will then be demolished making way for a new section of the bridge. The bridgeis schedule to reopen at 5 a.m. Tuesday Sept. 8.

If you need to get in or out of San Francisco, the best option is to take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) that runs beneath the Bay over to the East Bay. If you’re traveling by car, head north over the Golden Gate Bridge for a scenic drive through Marin County and cross over the Richmond Bridge from San Rafael. An faster route, however, is to drive south on Hwy 101 to the San Mateo Bridge and cross over the Bay to Interstate 880 and head north toward Oakland or Berkeley.

Yes, it’s a slight inconvenience, but Labor Day weekend is historically a slow-traffic time and thus a better time to perform this bridge overhaul. Either way you look at it, there’s always an adventure in San Francisco; this is just another for the history books.

Related Orbitz resources:

• San Francisco hotels

Tagged: California