Golden Gate Bridge (SFO) vs Ponte 25 de Abril (LIS)

bridges

This post has been brought to you by every time someone compared the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with Ponte 25 de Abril in Lisbon. (There are other similarities, this is probably the one named the most.) Both are suspension bridges and both are red, but are those two things really enough to warrant all the comparisons? I dug through my archives for pictures of both, let’s take a look…

To give you an idea of how often these two bridges are compared, the official website for the Golden Gate Bridge has a section about 25 of Abril Bridge:

WHAT OTHER NOT-SO-FAMOUS SUSPENSION BRIDGE IS PAINTED THE SAME COLOR AS THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE?

The 25 de Abril Bridge, or the “25th of April Bridge,” is a suspension bridge connecting the city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, to the municipality of Almada on the left bank of the Tejo River. It was inaugurated on August 6, 1966, and a train platform was added in 1999. Because of its similar coloring, it is often compared to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. It was built by the same company (American Bridge Company) that constructed the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (but not the Golden Gate Bridge), explaining its similarity in design to the Bay Bridge. With a total length of 2,277 meters, it is the 20th largest suspension bridge in the world. The upper platform carries six car lanes, the lower platform two train tracks. Until 1974, the bridge was named Salazar Bridge.

GoldenGateBridge.org

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge

Don’t let the colour fool you: the Bay Bridge is quite similar to the 25 de Abril Bridge. Did the American Bridge Company paint them different colours so they WOULDN’T be compared? Because apparently, that’s what happened. Everyone compares the two red bridges instead.

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge

Back to the Golden Gate Bridge for some stats:

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

Total length: 8,981 ft (2,737.4 m), about 1.7 mi (2.7 km)
Longest span: 4,200 ft (1,280.2 m)
Opened: May 27, 1937
Daily traffic: 112,800 (FY 2016/2017)
Toll (as of July 1, 2019): Cars (southbound only) / $8.20 (Pay by plate), $7.35 (FasTrak), $5.35 (carpools during peak hours, FasTrak only)

Source: Wikipedia, GoldenGateBridge.org

25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon
25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon

Ponte 25 de Abril (April 25 Bridge)

Total length: 2,277.64 m
Longest span: 1,012.88 m
Opened: 6 August 1966
Daily traffic: 150,000 cars, 157 trains (2006)
Toll: €1.85 for cars northbound (2019)

Source: Wikipedia, IMT

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon
25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon
25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon
25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon

So what do you think?

Are they really THAT similar? Have you seen both and did you compare them, too?

Maybe I’m a bridge nerd, but I never compared them. To me, they’re very different bridges not just structurally, but in surroundings, too. San Francisco is a MUCH bigger city both in population and spread, and the city layouts are quite different. Lisbon’s summer climate is much drier. Also, the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge are crossings for the Pacific Ocean, not a wide river as in Lisbon. The 25 de Abril Bridge is nearly 29 years younger, carries cars AND trains, and has a cheaper toll (even with more car traffic).



It wasn’t until I heard people mention it and I kept reading it in blogs that I wondered if a crappy memory was to blame. But I also read somewhere that Forth Road Bridge in Edinburgh is a sister bridge, and despite having lived in Edinburgh for two years, I never made that comparison, either. But evidently, I’m in the minority!

The Time I Got Out of Paying A Bridge Toll… By Being Canadian

I believe it was Spring 2001. I drove to San Francisco directly from Vancouver (14+ hours!) for Easter break to help a friend move to California. I was entering the on-ramp for the Golden Gate Bridge and reached the toll booth in a panic after digging out my wallet and realizing I had only Canadian money on hand (maybe they take credit cards now but they didn’t back then). I explained this to the person at the toll booth, hoping he wouldn’t start lecturing me (New York toll booth staff have yelled at me for one thing or another).

He took one look at my license plates.

“Canadian?”

Once I nodded, he waved me through…

And speaking of bridges, did you know about the other major bridge in Lisbon?

10 Comments

    1. Was going to do it like this, but the only thing holding me back is that I haven’t been to Brazil… yet. I’ll still post my Cristo Rei pics from Almada, but not a side-by-side like this.

  1. Actually their city area is more or less the same. Population wise the difference is from aprox. 800.000 vs 600.000 on what you consider county lines so, what do you consider MUCH bigger?

    1. Pedro, consider that the San Francisco Bay Area is a combined area of nine counties (San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland) = 8,713,914 (2015 Estimate). The metropolitan area of Lisbon has around 3 million.

      While the City of San Francisco may have a similar resident population to the City of Lisbon, it has some of the most expensive real estate in the United States — even more than New York City.

      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-12/north-americas-most-expensive-housing-markets

      Most of SFO’s workers can’t afford to live there, so they live in other municipalities and commute. With an unemployment rate of <4%, the daytime population to fill those skyscrapers and office towers and large corporate buildings makes for a sizeable difference in how SFO looks versus Lisbon. There is no mistaking the two cities when looking from Marin County Headlands south to SFO, or north to Lisbon from Almada. Lisbon’s tallest building is 120m. SFO has 51 buildings over 122m, and 22 buildings over 150m, giving it a much more skyscraper-type skyline.

  2. hi,

    Wikipedia states that the anual average precipitation for Lisbon is a little higher than the one for San Francisco. Given that both cities are inside regions with a similar climate (Mediterranean), the summer in San Francisco is also almost without rain. Rain is one thing, sea fog is another thing. Fog happens in the coastal areas of deserts too. It happens in the Western Sahara, it happens in the Atacama desert, it happens in Namíbia too. Maritime fog is caused by cold ocean water. Fog is what produces San Francisco micro-climate, not rain.

    Correct me if I am wrong but I have arranged some self made explanations for the summer difference between San Francisco and Lisbon:
    1 – Both cities are by west coasts with a cold ocean water current flowing from North fo South. This is what causes the fog. However the cold California current in the Pacific is even colder than the Portugal / Canary current in the Atlantic. This is probably because the North Pacific Ocean is wider than the North Atlantic Ocean. The westerlies push the water from the west to the east in the temperate latitudes, so the bigger the ocean is, the colder the current become. There’s fog in Lisbon in the winter when the water is colder.
    2 – In the particular case of the Atlantic, it’s not the whole Atlantic current that turns to south after reaching Europe. A part of that current continues around the British Isles to the North Sea. So in the case of the Atlantic, the cold current is weaker because it was split in two after reaching Europe, with only half flowing westwards of France, Galicia (Spain), Portugal, Andalucia (Spain) and Morocco.
    3 – Both San Francisco and Lisbon are located in penínsulas with the ocean on the western side. However, Lisbon’s peninsula is wider. The city of Lisbon occupies only the eastern side of Lisbon’s peninsula. The city of San Francisco occupies the whole San Francisco peninsula. San Francisco has a direct ocean coast. Lisbon has not. San Francisco is more explosed to that foggy, chilly maritime microclimate than the city of Lisbon. If you go to the west coast of Lisbon’s peninsula, which are the regions between Sintra and the sea, there’s also some of that microclimate effect – cooler temperatures, some fog, shorter summers – although less in intensity than in San Francisco.
    4 -The city of Lisbon experiences cool north wind and some chill at night, but I believe that it’s less intense than San Francisco. Besides there are heat waves in Lisbon with tempretatures reaching 40º C. Both places have deserts hundreds of kilometers to the south: the Southern Califórnia desert in the US and México, and the Sahara desert in Morocco. The Sahara desert, the biggest hot desert in the world, is much bigger than the US/México western deserts. This may explain why the heat waves in the Mediterranean climate region of Portugal and Spain occur more often than the heat waves around Mediterranean climate central Califórnia.

    Correct? Or not quite so?

    1. Well, I would venture to say that the micro-climate situations between Lisbon and San Francisco are quite different, not just because of the fog. But it’s true that the fog in San Francisco is very pervasive — in fact, I made a point of avoiding SFO for this reason, and opting for OAK airport instead whenever I could. SFO has the worst track record in the country for cancelled flights due to weather:

      https://archives.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/11/21/sfo-ranks-worst-airport-when-it-comes-to-weather-delays

      The trouble with comparing the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and San Francisco in terms of weather is that SFO is more than 2x the area of Lisbon (6,400km vs 3,015km, respectively):

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland%E2%80%93Hayward,_CA_Metropolitan_Statistical_Area
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Metropolitan_Area

      Thanks to the proximity of Silicon Valley, there are all sorts of apps dedicated to giving neighbourhood-specific weather reports because nobody ever knows what to wear…

      http://sfist.com/2015/03/17/finally_this_sf_microclimate_app_sh.php

      I haven’t looked at the wind reports but from personal experience, I would say it’s definitely windier in San Francisco than it is in Lisbon, too, which is part of why everybody talks about layers. It can be a nice day at the beach in San Francisco, but everyone is wearing hoodies and jeans because the wind never dies down!

  3. Okay, I’ve enjoyed the links and vast knowledge, but there are photos that 95% of Lisbon’s and 95% of San Franciscans would get wrong. So yes, the bridges deserve the comparison.

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