The Golden Gate Bridge just received a technological upgrade in order to increase the safety of commuters and reduce traffic congestion.
For decades, small plastic dividers separated the northbound traffic from the southbound, but they’ve proven to be problematic in recent years.
The first problem came from switching the position of the dividers in order to accommodate traffic conditions.
In order to rearrange the lanes, workers had to move each plastic divider by hand.
Another problem was that the plastic dividers offered little to no protection from vehicles that crossed over into opposing traffic. According to the NY Times, there have been over 128 head-on collisions on the bridge since 1970.
Because of these issues, a $30 million dollar movable median called the “Road Zipper” was installed earlier this year.
The new median is made up over over 3000 steel-clad concrete blocks that are designed to allow a custom truck to pass over them and automatically move the blocks to the opposite side, freeing up another lane at a fraction of the time it took to do it by hand.
Check out the clip below to see the system in action below.
Looks like the future is already here.