Golden Gate Bridge -- Suicide Barrier Design

[lofter1]

San Franciscans Try Again to Suicide-Proof
the Golden Gate Bridge

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/11/us/11bridge.xlarge1.jpg
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
An icon of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge has also been a magnet for people
who want to end their lives by jumping over its low railings.

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/us/11bridge.html?ex=1155960000&en=a75825b44c867c94&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY)
By JESSE McKINLEY
August 11, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 — In September 2000, Kevin Hines took a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. Listening to voices inside his head, he walked to the railing, climbed over, and jumped.

Mr. Hines lived, becoming one of only about two dozen people ever to survive the leap from the internationally recognized landmark.

Since 1937, when the Golden Gate opened, it is estimated that 1,200 other people have hurdled that same four-foot-high railing and leapt to their deaths, making the bridge one of the world’s most popular suicide sites.

Mr. Hines, who his 24 and suffers from a bipolar disorder, fell some 250 feet. He landed feet-first, mangling only his ankle and shattering two vertebrae. But he said he never should have gotten that far.

“I can guarantee you that a suicide barrier would have stopped me,” he said, “and I would have been taken to a hospital and given help.”

Now, after decades of debate, the board of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, which controls the bridge, has taken a step toward just such a barrier, last year approving a $2 million engineering and environmental study, and, on Aug. 1, the bridge district accepted four proposals from engineering teams. (See below)

Officials seemed hopeful that they might soon have a definitive answer on a surprisingly intractable issue.

“I think the direction we’re headed in has the greatest potential to settle it once and for all,” said Celia Kupersmith, the general manager and chief executive of the bridge district. “If they make a decision to build, then they’ll build it. And if they don’t, we’ll have good solid technical and engineering and environmental information when the subject comes back up again.”

The topic has certainly come up before, and discussions by opponents and supporters on the board and throughout the city have touched on everything from questions of free will versus paternalism to practical concerns like how a barrier might affect the structural integrity of the 1.7 mile span.

Over the years, bridge officials have considered plans for a barrier more than a half-dozen times — some complete with architectural designs, cost estimates, and prototypes — but each has been derailed.

Opponents argue that a suicide barrier’s unsightly railings, nets, or some combination thereof would mar the beauty of an Art Deco design marvel. Moreover, antibarrier forces say, would-be jumpers prevented from hurling themselves off the Golden Gate would simply find another location, like the Bay Bridge, which is nearby.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/11/us/11bridge.alrge2.jpg
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The pedestrian deck of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The opponents also point out that only about 3 percent of all people who commit suicide in the Bay Area do so by leaping from the Golden Gate.

Clark D. Hinderleider, a cardiac surgeon who lives in Marin County, across the bridge from San Francisco, has been outspoken in his opposition to the barrier.

“No one has ever shown any statistic how this would impact the general trend of suicides in the metropolitan area,” Dr. Hinderleider said, adding that the only way to truly stop suicides at the Golden Gate would be by “preventing people from going on the bridge.”

There is also the issue of cost. The bridge district is projecting a $70 million shortfall over the next five years. In recent years, the board has raised fares and tolls, cut bus service and staff, and considered other solutions, including corporate sponsorship.

The cost of a barrier is estimated at $15 million to $25 million, money that barrier opponents say could be better spent elsewhere. Even if the board approved a barrier, Ms. Kupersmith said, “We don’t know where the money will come for this.”

Then there are elements over which no one has any control, foremost of which is the wind. A critical factor in any potential barrier design is whether the bridge could handle the added aerodynamic drag it might create.

The bridge district’s chief engineer, Denis Mulligan, likened the Golden Gate to a giant airplane wing. “Adding a barrier would be like changing the flaps on a wing,” he said. “And subtle changes in the shape can have a big impact.”

The most recent effort to solve the barrier dilemma occurred in the late 1990’s, when a company called Z-Clip International Fencing tested a barrier prototype — a curving, wire and pole structure that bent toward anyone who tried to scale it — which effectively stopped most climbers. But under criteria laid out by another study in the early 1970’s, any barrier the board approved had to be 100 percent effective, and thus the Z-Clip model was later dropped from consideration.

This time, the criteria have been loosened, and several barrier supporters have joined the board. Tom Ammiano, who has been a board member for the past 10 years, said he thought that would make a difference.

“There’s never really been any political will behind this, but this step really speaks volumes,” Mr. Ammiano said of the board’s approval of the study. “But it is slow and it is elusive. And as we’re talking, people are jumping.”

Barrier advocates point out that on average two people a month jump from the Golden Gate. Bridge officials confirmed that number — they tallied 23 suicides there in 2005 — but also estimate that their security patrols and maintenance workers thwart 70 percent of those who consider jumping.

But Mr. Ammiano, who is also a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and other supporters say that percentage could rise to 100 with a barrier. Other well-known tourist attractions that have such barriers, like the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building, have greatly reduced the number of suicide attempts.

“You can live and let live up to a point,” he said. “But you don’t want someone coming into your living room and killing themselves. It’s a public bridge, and as such, this is a public safety issue.”

The editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle, which ran a seven-part series on the suicides last fall, supports a barrier.

The debate was also given new fuel in early 2005, when the filmmaker Eric Steel announced that he had captured more than a dozen Golden Gate jumpers in action as he shot a documentary, “The Bridge.”

Bridge officials said that an increase in suicides and attempted suicides occurred early this summer after the film received significant media attention and was shown in San Francisco.

Mel Blaustein, the president of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, which has lobbied for a suicide barrier, said Mr. Steel’s film had helped to mobilize supporters.

“The bridge has a particular allure, its iconic, romantic, a last view of the city before dying,” Dr. Blaustein said. “But it’s actually a miserable way to die.”

Jumpers reach a speed of about 75 miles per hour on impact, which often shatters the spine and results in multiple fractures or rips the internal organs away from their moorings. Some jumpers drown, others bleed to death. Some bodies are never recovered, swept out to sea or eaten by sharks.

Today, Mr. Hines takes drugs to treat his illness and speaks to students and others about his experience and what he has learned from it. Stopping suicide, he knows, “is a pretty grandiose ambition.”

“But my goal is to make a dent,” he said. “And I know a barrier would help.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

***********************************

WEB RESULTS

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP) NO. 2006-B-17
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AND PRELIMINARY DESIGN
FOR A SUICIDE DETERRENT SYSTEM ON THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

Proposals for the above-referenced RFP were received by the Office of the Secretary of the District on
Tuesday, August 1, 2006, by 4:00 p.m., listed alphabetically, as follows:
Carter & Burgess, Inc., Los Angeles, CA


DMJM Harris, Iselin, NJPBS&J, Orange, CAURS Corporation, San Francisco, CA

[lofter1]

An older article from the SF Chronicle with some preliminary design ideas:

LETHAL BEAUTY
THE ENGINEERING CHALLENGE:
A suicide barrier must be effective and safe.

The sixth in a seven-part series on the Golden Gate Bridge barrier debate.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/11/04/mn_suicide064_ckh.jpg
The Golden Gate Bridge

SF CHRONICLE (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/04/MNG9UFI71E1.DTL)
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
Friday, November 4, 2005

If plans for a suicide barrier along the Golden Gate Bridge ever reach the point where Jon Raggett is involved, he won't fuss over aesthetics or wonder whether the barrier would just send self-destructive people somewhere else.

He'll be studying drag and flutter, aerodynamics and vortex shedding -- in layman's terms, testing whether a barrier would increase the bridge's vulnerability to damage in a major storm.

"You have to be careful when you're dealing with any flexible structure," says Raggett, president of Westwind Laboratory in Marina (Monterey County). Raggett is a specialist in wind-tunnel analysis who has conducted tests on such refinements to the Golden Gate Bridge as the 2003 addition of railings that separate automobile lanes from the pedestrian walkways.

"Little changes in railing details can make a huge difference," Raggett says. "You can't look at the elements of the bridge piece by piece. You have to look at the whole picture."

Raggett's perspective is a reminder that, beyond the moral and aesthetic issues, the engineering challenges posed by a suicide barrier are daunting. A new barrier along the sides of the 4,200-foot-long span needs to be formidable enough to stop or slow down people who want to leap off the edge -- but not so formidable that it adds dangerous stress to a structure that on three occasions was closed because of high winds.

The most notorious of these incidents was in 1951, when 70-mph gusts caused such turbulence that the deck swayed 12 feet in either direction. Worse, the deck whipped up and down erratically. "Cars were being blown clear out of their lanes," according to a newspaper interview with the police sergeant who ordered the closure.

The bridge reopened the next day and was pronounced safe, but in 1954, $3.5 million was spent to stiffen the bridge by adding new trusses below the deck. Now, 51 years later, a planned $160 million seismic retrofit for the central portion of the bridge includes design features, such as slight alterations to the western railing, that will allow wind to flow through the structure more smoothly.

"We came to a conclusion that from the standpoint of risk, the bridge is more vulnerable to wind than to earthquakes," says Mark Ketchum, a vice president at OPAC Consulting Engineers, who in the late 1980s conducted seismic studies of the bridge for another firm. "The work they did in the 1950s helped a lot, but ... this is the last of America's major bridges designed without serious wind testing."

Any new elements on the bridge, such as a suicide barrier, must be calibrated with meticulous care. Done properly, additions can actually improve the wind situation. But if they're poorly spaced or crudely designed, such as rails with blunt edges instead of sleek curves, they can block the smooth flow of wind.

Worse, the wind can carom off in unpredictable directions. That phenomenon is known as vortex shedding, which is what triggered the erratic movements in 1951 when the bridge began to "flutter," to use the colloquial engineering term.

"People in the 1930s didn't understand wind dynamics -- they thought wind just pushed on the bridge. But that's not how a bridge performs," says Dennis Mulligan, chief engineer for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/11/04/mn_suicide_barrier1a.jpg
Numerous suicide barriers have been proposed in past decades either to replace
or augment the existing 4-foot-high railings along the Golden Gate Bridge.
This is the existing railing.

Earlier this year, the bridge district estimated that a suicide barrier would cost between $15 million and $25 million. The district has raised approximately $1.7 million of the $2 million needed for a study that would explore whether such a barrier would work.

Should the study find that an effective barrier is feasible, Mulligan estimates the design process would take at least two years.

Beyond the technical research required -- for instance, wind analysis by a firm such as Raggett's -- the main reason for the drawn-out pace is aesthetics. The bridge is revered, even though it is not a registered national landmark, so any design process would include consultation with preservationists and critiques by outside architects.

The study must also test the "reasonable effectiveness" of any barrier system; an attempt to climb over it should take enough time and effort that authorities would have time to rescue the person. But this also means that a barrier must be safe for rescuers who might be forced to clamber onto it.

A barrier must also be relatively easy to maintain; it can't require more attention than other pieces of the bridge. It can't be too heavy, and it can't interfere with regular bridge operations.

When a similar study was done for the district in the early '70s by the local architectural firm Anshen & Allen, the factors used to evaluate designs ranged from "effectiveness of suicide prevention" and "impediment to viewing for pedestrians and motorists" to whether a barrier would be prone to vandalism.

It was a less regulated era -- there was no formal architectural review, for instance -- and the conceptual study took only five months. But the tangle of emotions and technical details back then was every bit as complex.

"When it was announced we would be doing this, our office started receiving all sorts of crank mail, sketches on envelopes, you name it," recalls Derek Parker, a director at Anshen & Allen. "We knew we had a challenging architectural job, and there were so many other aspects to take into account."

The preferred design of the 18 presented by Anshen & Allen would have replaced the existing railings with a new 8-foot-high fence that consisted of thin vertical rods spaced 6 inches apart. The plan never progressed to a final design stage, much less construction -- in part, Parker says, because the transportation district wanted Anshen & Allen to agree that if someone was able to scale the barrier and commit suicide, the architects rather than the district would be held liable in lawsuits.

More recently, four UC Berkeley undergraduate engineering students this spring devised models of three possible barriers. Their study was developed by civil and environmental engineering Professor Robert Bea at the behest of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California.

One model updated the Anshen & Allen scheme, while another would attach new support posts to the existing railings and stretch horizontal tension wires between them, with the structure curving in toward the sidewalk. The final version added what the students called a "flowing arch portal" atop the railings, with thin vertical cables supported by an Art Deco frame.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/11/04/mn_suicide_barrier4.jpg
Three models designed by UC Berkeley engineering students this spring include
a new 8-foot-high fence with thin vertical rods that are difficult to climb, seen here.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/11/04/mn_suicide_barrier3.jpg
This UC Berkeley engineering student design has a 4-foot-high addition to the railing
that curves in toward the sidewalk at the top.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/11/04/mn_suicide_barrier2.jpg
This UC Berkeley engineering student design has an addition that combines vertical rods
with decorative arches in an Art Deco style.

"We came up with approximately 50 different design ideas and then quickly narrowed the list down to 10," says Douglas Wahl, one of the students.
"Some would have been too difficult to construct, and others proved not to be workable."

But no matter how straightforward a barrier might seem in a cursory review, any formal study will take into account the impact of all conceivable changes to the bridge.

For instance, Mulligan points out that a design based on thin vertical rods, as favored in the '70s, could be a safety hazard for bicyclists, who use the bridge in vastly greater numbers today. The reason? Their handlebars could get snagged in the rods.

"In a simplified sense, the design of a suicide barrier sounds easy," Mulligan says. "But for an informed decision, there's a lot to be studied and analyzed first."

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

[lofter1]

Lethal Beauty
The Allure:
Beauty and an easy route to death
have long made the Golden Gate Bridge
a magnet for suicides

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/10/30/mn_lethalbeauty_jumper_jrs0039.jpg
The bridge's 4-foot railing didn't deter a potential suicide this spring, but a
California Highway Patrol officer was able to persuade the young man not to jump.

SF CHRONICLE (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/30/MNG2NFF7KI1.DTL)
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005
One-thousand, two-hundred eighteen dead. The lives of families devastated. Sixty-eight years of debate about a suicide barrier. Today, The Chronicle begins a seven-part series looking at the darker side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The conclusion is inescapable: A suicide barrier would prevent deaths. Golden Gate Bridge district directors voted in March to authorize a $2 million feasibility study, which has not yet been fully funded. The stories this week provide the context, background, meaning and a human dimension for the decisions that will follow. We take it for granted -- those of us who spend our lives here. But the potency of the Golden Gate Bridge, in its symbolism and beauty, is probably unmatched by any other urban structure in the world.

On those halcyon afternoons when fog threads the bridge's harp strings and suspension cables, when clouds settle over the East Bay hills and the sun catches diamonds in the bay, this greatest of vistas exhibits itself proudly: tawny hills of Marin, shimmering bulk of Angel Island, raw beacon of Alcatraz and the lazy, Mediterranean contours of San Francisco.

This is the view, on a good day, that greets the suicide before he jumps -- a panorama enthralling in its harmony of land, sea and sky. Even when the cooling fog blunts the view, the vast majority of jumpers take their last step facing east instead of west toward the Pacific.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the world's No. 1 suicide magnet, in part because it makes suicide so easy. People jump and kill themselves there, an average of 19 a year. In the peak year, 1977, there were 40 suicides. Some dive not expecting obscurity or oblivion but a kind of grace -- a welcoming body of water that inducts the jumper into nature.

"I'd heard the water just sweeps you under," Ken Baldwin of Angels Camp in Calaveras County, who survived his jump in 1985, told the New Yorker magazine.

In fact, there's nothing peaceful in a jump from the bridge. Once a person dives, depending on where he or she jumps, the body plummets 240 to 250 feet in four seconds, traveling about 75 mph, and hits the water with the force of a speeding truck meeting a concrete building. Some die instantly from extensive internal injuries; others drown in their own blood.

The jump is fatal 98 percent of the time. The Chronicle's research indicates that at least 1,218 suicides were reported between the time the bridge opened, on May 27, 1937, and this past Friday. Local mental health experts believe that number could be higher, considering the suicides who jump and go undetected, their bodies floating out to sea.

Three to 1, they're men, according to a recent study by the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California that compiled Marin County coroner's reports from January 1995 to July 2005. Eighty-seven percent are Bay Area residents -- exploding the myth that people flock from around the world to die here.

They range from 14 to 85, with an approximate median age of 41. Some leave suicide notes; most don't. An estimated 26 jumpers have survived, according to San Francisco Suicide Prevention and the Marin County coroner.

Beyond those numbers, it's difficult to draw a collective profile. The first jumper, on Aug. 7, 1937, was Harold Wobber, a World War I veteran. Wobber turned to a stranger on the walkway -- saying, "This is as far as I go" -- and took his last step.

Robert Blyther, a 27-year-old Navy veteran, flew from Virginia to San Francisco in December 1980 specifically to jump off the bridge to protest the election of Ronald Reagan as president.

Filomeno De La Cruz, 33, celebrated Thanksgiving with relatives in 1993, then walked his 2-year-old son along the bridge. Around 5 p.m., De La Cruz lifted the child from his stroller, grasped him in his arms and jumped over the guardrail. "He was going through a divorce and custody fight," a homicide inspector said at the time.

Weldon Kees, 40, was a poet and filmmaker who produced KPFA's radio show "Behind the Movie Camera." Kees parked his 1954 Plymouth Savoy at the bridge parking lot on July 18, 1955, left his keys in the ignition and disappeared. His body was never recovered.

Fifty years later, Jonathan Zablotny, a senior at International High School, took his life. "Overall he had more reasons to be happy than to kill himself," wrote Zablotny's friend Patrick Fitzgerald in a letter to the bridge district board.

"He told no one and left no note. All we know is that he left for school Tuesday morning and never got there. That afternoon he was dead."

Tho the dark be cold and blind, Yet her sea-fog's touch is kind, And her mightier caress Is joy and the pain thereof; And great is thy tenderness,

O cool, grey city of love! Poet George Sterling wrote those words in 1923, and the late Chronicle columnist Herb Caen was fond of quoting the last line. Sterling's words effuse romantic notions of San Francisco, its generous spirit and the "tenderness" of its residents. In a city defined by loss and impermanence -- settled by gold speculators, razed by earthquake and fire, notorious as an open port where anything goes -- Sterling found forgiveness and redemption, a balm for loneliness ...

Suicides by year

This data is based on The Chronicle's review of Golden Gate Bridge, Highway
and Transportation District records.
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/10/30/mn_suicide30_year_tt.gif


©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

[lofter1]

Lethal Beauty

LINK (http://www.sfgate.com/lethalbeauty/) to the full series

Suicides by location

This data is based on The Chronicle's review of Golden Gate Bridge,
Highway and Transportation District records.

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2005/10/30/mn_suicide30_loc_tt.gif

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

[Dagrecco82]

I like proposal #3 the best. They definitely need to keep in touch with the Art Deco design of the bridge.

[dtolman]

From the point of view of a recent visitor -they all stink. Part of the allure of walking the bridge are the fantastic unobstructed views. Part of the bridge is already surrounded by similiar fences - and it really detracted from the experience.

Its a shame they can't come up with something (netting below the bridge?) that could serve this purpose, without ruining the view.

[ablarc]

^ Your solution saves the view from the bridge but won't get you much praise from those who care about the view [i]to[i] the bridge.

[GVNY]

Don't build one. People will jump anyways...

[ablarc]

Don't build one. People will jump anyways...
Agreed; if people want to kill themselves, they will. Save the tax money and don't ruin the beauty of the bridge. Stow the do-gooding and let folks have a scenic place to pack it in.

[Bob]

"We don't need to outlaw snowmobiles on ice. We need to outlaw stupid people."

[pkh]

One person needlessly dies every fifteen days at the Golden Gate Bridge. The solution is simple - raise the rails or close the walkway. To date over 1,500 have died many have been swept to sea thus preventing a true accounting.

The view that people will just go somewhere else is foolish. Let them - we are irresponsible for not stopping them at the Bridge. If you found a loaded gun in a psychiatric ward would you not confiscate it ? The Golden Gate falls into the same class.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem - the Bridge rail is too low the temptation is too high.

Most believe that death at the Bridge is painless and quick. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Death at the Bridge is horrible with victims usually drowing in their own blood due to the loss of a limb from hitting the water. Many try to scream but are unable as the tides rush the out to sea filling thier lungs muffling their screams.

98% of those prevented from suicide never try it again. We have a society whose children are killing themseves in record numbers. Finally, the real victims are those left behind who must live each day contemplating the horror.

[ablarc]

^ So you think the present bridge design actually increases the suicide rate in the area?

[bubdanose]

They won't put up a barrier if the structural integrity of the bridge is in jeopardy....it just doesn't make sense....

I can't imagine being on a flexible bridge that swings with high winds....dang....gives me palpitations just thinking about it....:)

[pkh]

The bridge's rails factually present a four foot invitation. The present contruction of the rails is all too inviting. One person jumps every 15 days.

That coupled with the popular misconception that death is easy at the Bridge has compelled at least over 1,200 to end their lives there.

Death due to the fall from the bridge is an unspeakable horror - with the victims usually drowning in their own blood. Their bodies are shattered by the impact their lungs fill with water as they struggle to stay afloat unable to scream as they are swept out to sea...

It is criminal

[lofter1]

Technically the only thing "criminal" here is the act of suicide.

[pkh]

The fact that the Bridge Directorate knows that they preside over a vortex of death and do nothing to stop it is criminal.

Malace aforethought resulting in death is criminal.

[TonyO]

^ The reason they haven't put up a barrier is not because anyone wants people to commit suicide. If/when they do put up a barrier, jumpers will find someplace different.

[lofter1]

The fact that the Bridge Directorate knows that they preside over a vortex of death and do nothing to stop it is criminal.

Malace aforethought resulting in death is criminal.

By that reasoning ^^ if one believes in a Supreme Creator then that entity would ultimately be responsible for every suicide by those who jumped from cliffs. The theory proposed is to pass the buck up the line to the top ...

[ryan]

The view that people will just go somewhere else is foolish.

This isn't a very convincing argument. I'm inclined to believe that a person desperate to to the deed will find a means - seems more intuitive than foolish.

[lofter1]

For anyone who has had the extreme pleasure of walking across the Golden Gate there is no denying the hypnotic power of looking over the railings and down into the swirling waters below ... No doubt a seductive place if someone has the tendency to end it all.

Would one act on that tendency minus the lure of the sea?

Don't know ...

However to lay the blame on the authority now in charge of a 70-year old bridge is mis-placed.

Ultimately any changes to the GGB -- if made -- must be sound from an engineering point of view.

[ablarc]

Ultimately any changes to the GGB -- if made -- must be sound from an engineering point of view.
...and keep it looking good.

[lofter1]

^^ hopefully

[pkh]

knowledge that deaths will occur because of ones inaction
is criminal

The Golden Gate Transportation District Directors know that every 15 days someone is going to kill themselves because of the low rails on the Bridge.

That is criminal - because it is willful and deliberate

[Schadenfrau]

PKH, I'm sorry if you've lost someone, but you can't blame a bridge for a suicide.

[Luca]

I think it is broadly accepted by sociologists/psychologists/criminologists that opportunity does have an impact on suicide rates. I.e., determined people can kill themselves almost no matter what but easy access to an acceptable (from the suicide's perspective) means of ending thigns does tend to have an impact.

We have to balance public safety with other cosndierations, of course. In teh case of the GGB, I doubt that any 'nice looking' barrier would be practical so and they're not liekly to hit/hurt soemone else in falling (unlike, say, from the ESB) so...

[pkh]

The design of the Bridge has been flawed since day one.
There have been numerous attempts to correct that flaw.
However, the Bridge directorate has been boxed in because they lack sufficent funds to make the correction.
TThe reason they lack the funds is due to the mismanagement of the Transporation District especially over the last twenty five years.

The Golden Gate Bridge was originally proposed as a toll bridge with the intention of the tolls paying off the bondholders resulting in a low cost entity. Funds would only be needed to maintain the bridge. However, the bridge directorate diverted revenues into a bus service - ferry line and rail line. All of which were outside the original intention of the Golden Gate Bridge Plan.

Today the District is managed by political apointees who have no knowledge of engineering - structural integrity - finance - bus or ferry management. They are apointed to the positions because they are vote or money getters for the minor politicians that appoint them.



The Bridge rails are factually too low and present an attractive hazard. Raising the rails will prevent suicide it is axiomatic. The other option is to close the walkways.

The argument that the Bridge should not be fixed because people will just go somewhere else is foolish. First of all suicide is an impetuous act, once stopped studies show that 98% never attempt again.

Knowing a significant hazard exists and ignoring it is similar to saying that to remove a loaded gun from a psychiatric ward is foolish because they will just kill them selves another way. There is an obligation to act.

Suicide has reached epidemic proportions, The solution is to remove hazardous means and invest in educating reagarding mental health.

[STT757]

I think the money would be better spent to hire folks trained in consouling and to spot potential suicidal people to walk the bridge.