page_title: Broadway Tunnel (San Francisco)
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Broadway Tunnel (San Francisco) / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Westbound tunnel, facing west.
context_page_description: The Broadway Tunnel is a roadway tunnel in San Francisco, California. The tunnel opened in 1952, and serves as a high-capacity conduit for traffic between Chinatown and North Beach to the east and Russian Hill and Van Ness Avenue to the west. In a proposal of the city's 1948 Transportation Plan, the tunnel was to serve as a link between the Embarcadero Freeway and the Central Freeway.
context_section_description: The east portal is just east of the Mason Street overpass. The west portal is just east of the Hyde Street overpass. Combined with these two overpasses, the tunnel provides for uninterrupted traffic flow along Broadway for a stretch of six blocks, between Powell on the east and Larkin on the west. There are two bores, each carrying two lanes of one-way traffic. The northern tunnel carries westbound traffic, and the southern tunnel carries eastbound traffic. Each tunnel is 1,616 feet (493 m) long.
  The vertical clearance throughout much of the tunnel is nearly 20 feet (6.1 m), but there is an overhanging concrete slab at the eastern end, which reduces vertical clearance to 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m).
  There are narrow sidewalks on the outboard side of each tunnel (e.g., the north side of the westbound tunnel). Bicyclists tend to use the sidewalk, but signal lights triggered by an inductive loop were installed in 2011 to alert motorists to the presence of bicycles in the tunnel.
caption: Westbound tunnel, facing west.
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