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April 18, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 13S
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| SAVING
LIVES: CEE seniors Doug Wahl and Robert
Simpson are part of a student team designing a barrier to prevent
people from committing suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate
Bridge. The team hopes to present its design to bridge authorities.
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Stopping
the jumpers
CEE seniors design suicide barrier for Golden
Gate Bridge
According to New Yorker
magazine, the Golden Gate Bridge is the world's leading suicide
location. On average, someone jumps every two weeks.
The railing along the bridge's walkway stands just four feet tall. As
he walked along it, CEE senior Doug Wahl looked over. "It's a good drop,"
he remembers thinking (220 feet at mean high water to be exact). Wahl
and fellow CEE seniors Danielle Hutchings, Ryan Stauffer and Robert
Simpson were visiting the bridge earlier this semester for a CE 180
class assignment. Their project was to design a barrier that would prevent
people from jumping.
People have asked for a suicide barrier on the bridge since the 1950s.
Other landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower an Empire State Building, have
them. But barrier supporters for the Golden Gate have run into stiff
opposition. The main worries, says the bridge's governing body, the
Golden Gate Bridge Authority, are cost and the effect a barrier might
have on the structure's renowned beauty. Proposed solutions have languished
on the drawing board. When they got their assignment, though, the undergraduate
team was undaunted. National controversy and a proven engineering snarl?
No problem.
It's not the first time Cal engineering students have worked on the
barrier. CEE professor Robert Bea helped organize a team in 1997. The
students did a deep engineering analysis of the barrier, concentrating
on structure and investigating product liability. Their work "got national
attention," says Bea, "but it did not get any attention from the Golden
Gate Bridge Authority."
Last fall, leading barrier supporters Dr. Paul Muller, head of the Northern
California Psychiatric Society and Dr. Jerome Motto, a professor of
psychiatry at University of San Francisco, called Bea to see if the
work could be revived. In January, the team received its assignment.
At the same time, the bridge authority, under public pressure, initiated
another study of the barrier. Though it didn't commission the students,
the timing couldn't have been better. In March, the team went to a bridge
authority meeting to hear families of suicide victims speak and learn
more.
With much of the engineering analysis already done, the current team
says it's concentrating on aesthetics. "We've been learning about the
Art Deco styling of the bridge," says Wahl. "Right now we're inspired
by a design called 'luminous veil,' which is vertical steel rods about
six inches apart. It's essentially a fence, but it's curved in such
a way that it looks like a sculpture." The team will complete a small-scale
model of the bridge for its final class presentation and hopes to present
its idea to the bridge authority.
"They've gotten so plugged in and so excited about this project," says
Bea. "They are building confidence and are they learning!"
The team agrees. "We know how to do all the calculations, but we've
really learned a lot about architecture," says Wahl. "It's weird. We're
now talking with an architecture vocabulary." The students also taught
themselves the psychological, economic, environmental and political
aspects of the problem. "It's been a lot of work and really complex,"
says Wahl. "But it's fun."
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