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Although the cost of building a tube was
substantially
higher than the cost of building a bridge,
in 1923 the decision
to build a tube was
made, so that automobile and ship traffic could be completely separated from
each other.
The commercial shipping industry, especially the Alaska Packers Association,
insisted their ships have unfettered access to the inner harbor. They didn't
want to wait for a draw bridge to open and close, or run the risk that one of
their ships might accidentally run into a bridge -- which actually did
happen when a ship ran into the Webster Street bridge about three years after
the tube was approved and about two years before it was completed. The temporary loss of
this vital connection of the Webster Street business  district and Downtown Oakland was a
hardship for many of the merchants and others living West end of Alameda
and helped spur the rebuilding of the bridge, even though it would be used only
temporarily, until the Posey Tube was completed.
On November
30, 1928, just one month after the opening of the Posey Tube, Alameda County auctioned the Webster Street Bridge,
(980 feet long, steel, swing-span rim-bearing type, cantilever construction)
to Sacramento County for just $3,100. The bridge had been erected
just 2 years earlier at a cost of $134,000.
1
By comparison, the
Posey Tube, cost over $4,400,000 ($4.4 million). |
