The Northbrae Tunnel, also referred to as the

Solano Avenue Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany, California is a two-mile (3.2 km) long east-west street. Solano Avenue is one of the larger shopping districts in the Berkeley area. Businesses along Solano Avenue cover a wide range, including grocery ...

Tunnel, was built as a commuter electric railroad tunnel in the northern part of

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, and was later converted to street use. In 1910 the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) was electrifying its steam-engine drawn ferry-train line (to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

) from

Oakland Pier The Oakland Long Wharf was an 11,000-foot railroad wharf and ferry pier along the east shore of San Francisco Bay located at the foot of Seventh Street in West Oakland. The Oakland Long Wharf was built, beginning 1868, by the Central Pacific Rai ...

via Shattuck Avenue to Vine Street in Berkeley and extending it north along the base of the

Berkeley Hills The Berkeley Hills are a range of the Pacific Coast Ranges that overlook the northeast side of the valley that encompasses San Francisco Bay. They were previously called the "Contra Costa Range/Hills" (from the original Spanish ''Sierra de la ...

to newly developing neighborhoods of Berkeley at Northbrae and

Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks is the second-largest city in Ventura County, California, United States. It is in the northwestern part of Greater Los Angeles, approximately from the city of Los Angeles and from Downtown. It is named after the many oak tree ...

. The route chosen was Henry Street and Sutter Street to its intersection with Hopkins. At this point a ridge carrying Marin and Los Angeles Avenues blocked the way. After investigating (1) a route around the ridge and (2) a cut through the ridge with bridges over it, it was decided to use the route of the cut but make it a tunnel instead, under Marin and Los Angeles Avenues just west of their intersection with The (Marin) Circle. The

cut-and-cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

method of tunnel construction was used. The tunnel curved to the west so that the railroad could continue through to the intersection of Solano Avenue and The Alameda and then to Thousand Oaks station at Solano and Colusa Avenues. The line also required a level grade across the lower canyon of Codornices Creek. To accomplish this, a temporary wooden trestle was built along Henry Street with tracks for the construction trains which was subsequently filled in with material excavated from the tunnel cut. A steel bridge was emplaced at Eunice Street. allowing auto traffic to pass under the tracks. The railroad was completed in 1911 and inspection trains were run at the end of that year, with service beginning January 1, 1912. The SP ferry-train service was changed to bridge-train service operated by its subsidiary,

Interurban Electric Railway The East Bay Electric Lines were a unit of the Southern Pacific Railroad that operated electric interurban-type trains in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.Tufveson.Ford (1977). Beginning in 1862 ...

(IER) across the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge in December, 1939. The IER ended service July 26, 1941, but the tracks in Berkeley were made available to the Key System, which extended service to Hopkins and Sutter Streets (the stop formerly called Northbrae) beginning August 6, 1941. Service was extended through the tunnel to a new terminal at Solano Avenue and The Alameda on December 6, 1942. All bridge-train service ended on April 20, 1958. A paved roadway was installed in the tunnel by the City of Berkeley, and was opened to traffic on December 15, 1962,''California Highways and Public Works'', March-April 1963, pp.61-64
/ref> extending Solano Avenue through the tunnel to connect with Sutter Street.

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See also