By Guy Span

The Golden Gate Bridge District has some seed money to study its use of a hydraulic loading ramp in San Francisco. The aim, according to the District Spokesperson, is to see if this system can be replaced with one more compatible with other systems, while retaining the flexibility of loading. Interestingly enough, the San Francisco dock for the Golden Gate Ferry is the only automated dock on the Bay and is not compatible with other docks. While that may seem a disadvantage, the Golden Gate dock is also the only one that loads passengers in a manner more advanced than Noah’s Ark.

By that we mean that at Golden Gate’s San Francisco dock, passengers can board through a wide entry way and all other systems are restricted to funneling in the passengers two-by-two or even worse, one at a time. Obviously, the restricted entryway increases dwell time at docks and adds to the total travel time. So the purpose of the study is to see how to replace the expensive and non-standard docking system with one more elegant and at least as wide. This will be a challenge.