Behind a chain link razor wire fence sits a windowless white hangar some three stories tall, surrounded by a strip of green lawn. The low point in the tunnelâs fortunes came with a 1971 proposal (mercifully never enacted) to use the Weehawken side of the tunnel as the worldâs deepest garbage chute. Finally, in July of 1979, all the pieces were in place. Mail would frequently arrive singed or deformed from the intense heat and pressure. Even before tolls and taxes, a burrito sold in New York brings in ten times the profit of one sold over the counter. The "Mid-Bay Bridge" Rush Wickes writes of a once-proposed "Mid Bay" bridge to connect San Francisco and Marin County via Angel Island, touching down near San Quentin and the Richmond - San Rafael I-580 span: "Discussion and some approximate plans for this bridge were held and made, I've seen the documents for them myself at the DOT library in DC. In the early days of the Cold War, both ends of the tunnel, along with the Chicago and Cedar Rapids access shafts, were considered as enormous fallout shelters. The San Francisco Bay is home to some of the most famous and magnificent bridges ever built, including the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, Hayward-San Mateo Bridge and the Dumbarton Bridge. A majority of voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties agreed to increase toll rates by $3 over six years on the seven state-operated bridges in the area. To make matters worse, breakdowns in the tunnel were frequent, especially in the central âhot zoneâ where temperatures could exceed 900 degrees Centigrade. He was also the public affairs officer with the California Department of Transportation, and he had a flair for the creative.At the time, the Bay Area was opening a lot of new freeways, and Halligan Sr. put his creative mind to work. ... Marin County green … Itâs like a time machine through the planetâs history.ââAre you ever tempted to sneak a burrito while down there?â I ask Dr. Rifkin, and he laughs.
This is probably one of the dullest places, geologically speaking, in the whole country. And some of those places down in the South Bay wonât even take customers anymore. The first regular mail shipments sent from San Francisco in the spring of 1934 had to compete with the sophisticated air mail system that had grown up during the tunnelâs long construction. While they could never beat the speed of the tunnel, airplanes could deliver documents at far lower price and risk in just a few dozen hours more. A variable message sign advises motorists of conditions ahead on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in this scene. "Ultimately, Halligan Sr. considered the rainbow tunnels to be one of the best things he accomplished during his career.
It was already obsolete. His son says he had a Silicon Valley robot clip the ribbon at one ceremony and had a local traffic helicopter drive through the ribbon at another.This was also the time -- the 1960s and '70s -- when highway planners were thinking a lot about the aesthetics and design of the roads they were laying down. The Halligans lived in Marinwood at the time, and Halligan Sr. thought it would be great if there was something a little nicer to welcome commuters driving back to the North Bay at the end of the day.But Halligan Sr. was not your average commuter. The bridge opened in 1956, and originally carried three lanes of traffic on each deck. When it came time to give the rainbow a new paint job, Halligan Sr. was not impressed with the work. The globetrotting Cavanaugh was a fanatic of the recently-invented Mission burrito but bemoaned being unable to get it anywhere outside of San Francisco. In 1936, at the height of the Depression, the tunnel ceased operation less than three years after it had opened.In the years to come all kinds of schemes would be floated for how to put the tunnel to use. âThe tunnel is an incredible economic engine for the region,â he says. The rainbow paint on the tunnel between Marin and San Francisco on Highway 101 was the brainchild of Caltrans public affairs officer Robert Halligan Sr. (Courtesy of the California Department of Transportation) All these years later, the tunnel has a new name -- the Robin Williams Tunnel -- but Schimm is still looking for an answer: Rainbow tunnel!' After a successful July 2 dry run with a sawdust mock burrito, the tunnel ceremoniously opened on Independence Day. And yet it wasnât long ago that it was impossible to find a good burrito of any kind in the city. The tunnel would resemble the pneumatic tube systems that had served New York City and Paris so well for mail delivery, but on an incomparably vaster scale. They know that weâre phoning in their order to Mountain View the moment they walk in the door, and they know weâve done everything in our power to keep them from waiting. The Golden Gate Bridge is exempt.