Inside the Zipper: Slow-Motion View of Coronado Bridge on Barrier Mover

Story, photos and video by Ken Stone

Jerry Browning has seen his share of suicidal people, dead animals and even a potential decapitation as a Caltrans equipment operator on the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge.

He operates the “zipper” machine twice a day, four times a week—easing the commute for thousands of motorists.

“Some people … say I have the best job in San Diego,” said Browning, 63, of El Cajon.

Browning has been a median-barrier mover from the beginning—an operator on the 1.6-mile route since April 1993.

“I’m considered the waver,” he said last week when Patch rode shotgun on a small fold-down chair in the front of the machine.  “Sometimes the whole family waves [back], and you can tell the dog is barking.”

Perhaps a couple dozen roads around the world, starting in New Zealand, employ the Barrier Systems’ $1.1 million transfer machine, which picks up 1,400-pound concrete or steel blocks and moves them left to right to change the number of westbound or eastbound lanes on the bridge from two to three.

The machine travels by autopilot at 3.8 miles an hour—westbound in the morning and eastbound in the afternoon, starting at 5:30.

“It wouldn’t be good to go faster” on the bridge because of its steep grades, Browning says. Three similar machines operate over 16 miles of Interstate 15 in North County, and travel faster.

“It could probably do 10 [mph],” Browning says, “but I don’t want to experience it myself.”

Communicating by headset with Gene Page, 56, another Caltrans operator from El Cajon seated in the “back,” Browning monitors digital readouts, checks his path and watches for road debris.

One machine does the work now—replacing a pair of blue barrier transfer machines in August 2011.

It movies the connected-concrete sections 12 feet at once instead of 6 feet under the old drill.

“I’m going to miss my old girls,” Browning said in summer 2011.

He may not miss some of the scary moments, such as when aluminum railing carried by a Navy truck smashed into a vacant driver’s area of the machine—while Browning and three others were yards away.

“It would have taken their heads off,” he said. He also acknowledges seeing plenty of would-be suicide leapers. “Usually, if someone is going to jump, they’ll do it right away,” he says. “I’ve seen them in the water, but I’ve never seen them actually jump.”

While driving a truck one day, he saw a woman looking to jump. He picked her up, and she asked to be dropped off at the top of the bridge, the highest point.

“I said: ‘I can’t do that, ma’am. I’ll take you to the other side,’” Browning recalled. “She was mad at me because CHP met her at the other end.”

Lighter moments were recalled—including visits from Japanese and Mideast folks checking out the equipment and a Coronado resident famous for wearing bow ties on his TV commercials.

“We’ve had Orville Redenbacher ride with us [in the 1990s],” he said. “He gave us all a picture of himself and a little bit of popcorn.” Redenbacher, who died in 1995, was accompanied by a girlfriend.

“We had to help her up into the machine,” Browning said. Despite traffic rushing on both sides before the morning and afternoon commutes, the zipper machine has been safe from accidents.

Drivers long ago got used to it, Browning said, “but they get a little irritated if we don’t move soon enough for them.” Creeping along at 3.8 mph afford the team a chance to watch—and clear—obstacles in the road.  

Browning recently saw a broken cell phone. Also spotted have been full wallets, rats, cats racing side-to-side “and a few possums.”

The day Patch rode, 43-year-old Bill Guthrie of Allied Gardens was on his fourth trip as a Caltrans trainee. He said he hoped he would be ready to operate the machine this week.

Retiring at the end of the year, Browning might hope that Guthrie adopts his habit of waving to passing cars.

Said the veteran zipper operator: “People tell me it makes their day.”