The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. It has one of the longest spans in the United States.
The toll bridge was conceived as early as the California Gold Rush days, but construction did not begin until 1933. Designed by Charles H. Purcell, and built by American Bridge Company, it opened on Thursday, November 12, 1936, six months before the Golden Gate Bridge. It originally carried automobile traffic on its upper deck, with trucks, cars, buses and commuter trains on the lower, but after the Key System abandoned rail service, the lower deck was converted to all-road traffic as well. In 1986, the bridge was unofficially dedicated to James Rolph.
The bridge has two sections of roughly equal length; the older western section, officially known as the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge, connects downtown San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, and the newer unnamed eastern section connects the island to Oakland.