The eerie sound now emanating from the Golden Gate Bridge is in the result of new sidewalk railing slats, just installed, meant to better handle the wind. Funny thing about wind: when it passes through certain open spaces, it creates a hum.
According to a statement by Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz of the Bridge District,
“The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing. The new musical tones coming from the bridge are a known and inevitable phenomenon that stem from our wind retrofit during very high winds.”
Cosulich-Schwartz adds: “As part of the design process, the District did extensive studies on the impacts of the project, including wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge under high winds.” Those tests, seen in the video below, showed that the bridge “would begin to hum” when air passed through it more freely.
And it looks like the strange sound is here to stay. The aerodynamic retrofit, on the western, bike-lane side of the bridge, is “necessary to ensure the safety and structural integrity of the bridge for generations to come,” Cosulich-Schwartz says.
Sources: KQED; YouTube