Another series of newspaper articles in 1982–84 describe how Wattenburg did the “BART story” again on the over-confident Golden Gate Bridge engineers who insisted that a moveable anti-collision barrier could not be designed that would fit between the traffic lanes on the bridge and meet the requirement that it be moved twice each day to allow reallocation of the lanes for rush hour flow. Then Bridge’s private engineering firm was being paid over a million dollars a year to advise the bridge district. Numerous fatal head-on collisions had made this a very controversial subject. A frustrated bridge director called on Wattenburg to find a solution. A few weeks later he came up with a design that stunned the confident engineers—and evidently fascinated the press and the public because it was so simple.
His solution was to use sections of large-diameter (24″) round steel pipe which are strung together on a strong steel cable like a spaghetti necklace. He later proved that the steel pipe is as strong as conventional concrete lane dividers. The steel pipe can be rolled from lane to lane quite easily to change traffic flow patterns. Once Wattenburg had proved that the problem could be solved by at least one inexpensive scheme, two other companies quickly came forth with alternate designs of their own. Internal politics over where and how money should be spent on bridge improvements has delayed installation of any of these anti-collision barriers to date. However, other bridges around the world have installed movable traffic barriers which are renditions of Wattenburg’s patented design that he offered to give the Golden Gate Bridge District free-of-charge.
The head of one embarrassed engineering firm working for the bridge district attacked Wattenburg’s credentials to be doing work for the district without having a license as a professional engineer (he evidently assumed that Wattenburg must be getting paid). Wattenburg’s terse response to the press was: “I don’t take public money for exposing high-priced fools who pretend to be competent engineers.”
Bill Wattenburg and his son, Eric, who was an engineering student at California State University, Chico, were issued a patent on their movable pipe barrier design in 1987. His son had designed the mechanism that automatically rolls the pipe barrier from lane to lane while keeping it tied down securely to the bridge deck or roadway at all times. Wattenburg said that he was about to give up on the pipe barrier idea because he hadn’t solved this problem. Eric picked up the problem one weekend and found a clever solution that made the whole scheme practical. Eric built a fully operational scale model that he demonstrated to the Golden Gate Bridge Directors.
Wattenburg told us that movable pipe barriers are still the cheapest and best traffic barriers that can be quickly installed around many places that could be attacked by vehicles carrying bombs or terrorists, such as government buildings, embassies oversees, and troop encampments in hostile places. “The military will get around to it someday, after we lose another few hundred of our people.”
Note: It took until late 1998 before anyone paid serious attention to Wattenburg’s idea of using the barrier to protect against truck bombs. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the successful testing performed by Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Unfortunately, the device still has not been used to this date.—PKS
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