The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in 1936, six months before the Golden Gate, and carries far more traffic. The western suspension span in front of you connects the city to Yerba Buena Island; the eastern half, a section of which collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, was fully replaced in 2013.
From 2013 to 2023 the western span carried The Bay Lights, Leo Villareal’s installation of 25,000 white LEDs animating the cables at night. Worn out by the marine environment, it went dark in March 2023. A rebuilt version, Bay Lights 360, was lit in March 2026: roughly 48,000 new LEDs engineered for the salt air, now covering both sides of the span, funded by an $11 million private campaign.
The Embarcadero promenade gives a ground-level view of the span; after dark, the light patterns never repeat.
