- City:
- South San Francisco, CA
- Site Type:
- Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels, Infrastructure and Utilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Public Works Administration (PWA), Public Works Funding
- Started:
- 1935
- Completed:
- 1936
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
The Public Works Administration (PWA) paid for a grade-separation underpass on the Bayshore Highway under the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks in South San Francisco. The project cost $200,000.
The underpass, completed in 1936, doubled the width of an earlier structure built in 1927 and increased its capacity from 4 to 8 lanes (lanes were narrower at the time). This was much desired by the local Chamber of Commerce and, no doubt, by travelers on the Bayshore Highway, the main route south from San Francisco to San Jose. It also improved access to the San Francisco Airport, which was benefitting from New Deal aid for its development in the 1930s.
This stretch of the old Bayshore highway was renamed Airport Boulevard when a new Highway 101 freeway was built in the 1960s.
Amusingly, one of the PWA record cards in the National Archives is mislabeled as a project in Seattle.
Source notes
Record #1175, Record Group 69-PWA, National Archives
"8 lane subway at South S.F. ready Thursday," Redwood City Tribune, March 10, 1936, p. 8. https://www.newspapers.com/image/841895058/
"Bayshore underpass to open tomorrow," Chico Enterprise, March 11, 1936, p. 6. https://www.newspapers.com/image/681002464/
Thanks to David Gallagher for pointing out the error on the PWA record card. https://twitter.com/DavidGallagher/status/1542643115416231937
Site originally submitted by Brent McKee on September 14, 2016.
Additional contributions by Richard Walker.
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