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OAKLAND — It can take you to San Francisco and it can put you on the road to prison; its views will inspire you; its congestion could drive you crazy.
It's the infamous MacArthur Maze, the freeway interchange near the eastern end of the Bay Bridge where Interstate highways 80, 580 and 880 converge.
The structure stands as a symbol of the vision and resilience of the Bay Area. Despite the shortage of cash in the 1930s, the California legislature had the foresight to allocate the then-whopping sum of $6.6 million for the maze and a similar structure on the San Francisco side. The maze has had two heroic comebacks, once from the destruction wrought by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and once after a fiery 2007 truck crash that collapsed a connector.
Even the sobriquet "MacArthur Maze," has a certain double-M resonance, a la Marilyn Monroe. The maze's original name was the far more utilitarian "Distribution Structure," and that's what Caltrans workers call it to this day. Motorists quickly dubbed it "the Maze," then the "MacArthur Maze" after the MacArthur Freeway was built.
When the maze opened to traffic in 1936, was a far less imposing structure, accommodating state Highway 17 and U.S. highways 50 and 40.
"What you see there now is a lot bigger than what was there in the 1930s," said John Goodwin of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. To see a remnant of the 1930s Maze, "take 580 east from Emeryville, exit at the MacArthur Boulevard exit and cruise under the freeway," Goodwin said.
Or visit this YouTube snippet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aya04pZkz0M&feature=related) from "Shadow of the Thin Man." The 1941 movie features footage of the early maze.
The maze was first re-engineered in the mid-1950s in connection with the construction of the three freeways that converge there now.
As Bay Area commuters know all too well, the Eastshore Freeway — a segment of I-80 and I-580 — empties into the maze, creating spectacular backups during rush hour. The same is true of the Nimitz Freeway, aka I-880, as well as I-580, which runs southeast through Oakland from the maze.
Highway 24 and I-980 were finished in 1985, creating another interchange with I-580 about a mile east of the maze — and, alas, more congestion.
Another re-engineering took place after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, bringing joy to the hearts of many West Oakland residents who fought to relocate the viaduct.
"A goodly chunk of West Oakland was walled off from the rest of Oakland by the double-deck structure that ran down Cypress Street," said Goodwin. "In the rebuild, the freeway was pushed to the western edge of Oakland and no longer slices through West Oakland."
In April 2008, a fireball from 8,600 gallons of spilled gasoline melted a connector ramp. Rancho Cordova firm C.C. Myers pulled off the stunning feat of repairing the damage in less than a month.
The crash raised questions. Some wondered if the ramp's design contributed to the crash, though the California Highway Patrol said the truck was simply going too fast.
Experts say the MacArthur Maze does a good job moving people through a tight bottleneck, considering that 270,000 vehicles pass through the maze daily.
"It's a sound design," said Reinhard Ludke, past president of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California and a structural and civil engineer with San Francisco's Creegan and D'Angelo. "Everything works as well as it could, and people get where they want to go."
That's more than can be said about many such structures. When the maze first opened, it accommodated traffic from only three small highways in a region with a population of 1.5 million. Some 6 million people, two re-engineerings and three major freeways later, it's still doing the job 24/7.
