Broadway Tunnel Gets a Scrubbing
The Broadway Tunnel , a major thoroughfare that connects Chinatown and North Beach to the east with Russian Hill to the west , is packed with traffic every day of the week . And as you can imagine , its walls and ceiling get covered with soot quickly .
San Francisco Public Works scrubs the 1,936-footlong tiled passageway every three months in order to keep it clean and pleasant for drivers , cyclists and pedestrians . The intensive cleaning takes about two weeks to complete , with the latest one wrapping up Aug . 11 .
Crews work overnight , on one bore at a time , from 10 p . m . to 6 a . m . to minimize impacts to traffic and adjacent neighborhoods .
The job is labor intensive . Crews clean the tunnel with high-pressure steamers , flusher and mechanical sweeper trucks , a specialized tunnel-scrubber machine and plenty of old-fashioned elbow grease .
Working at night with road closures and detours , our crews faced challenges : Drivers so reliant on their GPS directions that they didn ’ t notice when a bore was closed and pedestrians who walked through the tunnel in the car-free traffic lanes . Fortunately , we had a team on traffic-control duty that was able to keep everybody safe .
Big shout-out to our crews for once again delivering a remarkable job of keeping the Broadway Tunnel clean : Herman Loo , Abdul Ajbour , Catina Heslip , Calvin Johnson , Heye “ Sam ” Qin , Stephen Lee , Duong Trang , Jahmon Burton , Jorge Cruz , David Allan , John Reilly , Ricardo Garcia , Ramiro Castillo , Richard Pender , Anthony Shelton , Frank Perez , Joseph Rayon , Reginald Holloway , John Sheehan and Sean Lange .
They ’ ll be out there again right before Thanksgiving to give the Broadway Tunnel a shine once again .