Golden Gate to
Study New Dock
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.
![](2.jpg)
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.
![](Golden%20Gate%20loading.jpg)