You can practically drive right up to it.
TikTok user and Bay Area resident Mingwei Samuel shared with his followers a video of one of the many not-so-known Hidden Gems near Oakland, California. Samuel showed us a tour of the underground pedestrian walkway tunnel directly underneath the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.
Check out his video below.
@mingweisamuel #didyouknow you can walk under the bay bridge toll plaza #hiddengems #bayarea ♬ original sound – Mingwei Samuel
If you’re wondering how to get to the entrance of the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza Pedestrian Walkway, there’s parking a couple feet away at the Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline Parking Lot at 210 Burma Rd, Oakland, CA 94607.
Here’s where it is on Google Maps.
The Red Star is the entrance to the pedestrian walkway.
Here are the coordinates and Google Maps URL to the actual entrance to the staircase:
- 37°49’24.4″N 122°18’49.0″W
- 37.823453, -122.313605
- Google Maps Link
The entrance, highlighted in a red square, is easy to miss.
As Samuel’s video shows, the pedestrian walkway first takes you to the actual Toll Plaza then, literally, directly underneath where drivers used to pay an actual toll booth operator.
Since most of the toll booths are now automated, tolls collected using FasTrak and License Plate Readers, there are no humans manning the booths.
But, as Samuel’s demonstrates, that doesn’t mean a curious pedestrian can’t pop his head up and wave to passing drivers.
Presumably the entrances to the booths are still open just in case the automated system crashes and humans have to take over. They’re also probably open for maintenance purposes.
The Bay Bridge Toll Plaza Pedestrian walkway eventually takes you to the other side to Toll Plaza Beach, a “secret beach” described by one Yelp reviewer as a place with “lots of junk, little to see, and a place where homeless people also might be living.”
Honestly, it sounds like a sketch place to smoke or the ideal place for bored h***y teenagers.
If you’re up for more of a hike, you can also park at Ikea near the entrance of the Bay Bridge Bike Trail off Shellmound St. It’s a mile away from the Toll Plaza and, before or after your “hike,” you can have lunch or whatever at Ikea’s cafeteria.
If you’re still bored after your visit to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza Pedestrian Walkway you can, of course, walk across the Bay Bridge, however far you want because, as the trail name suggests, that’s why it’s there.
I’ve jogged to the center of the Bay Bridge and back and didn’t even know this walkway existed.
After blogging about it, now I have to go back.
Did you know about this secret and sketchy little walkway? Let me know in the comments below.
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