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Vol. 73/No. 45      November 23, 2009

 
San Francisco: bridge
reopens with warning
 
BY LEA SHERMAN  
SAN FRANCISCO—Commuters drive across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge gingerly these days. Following a six-day closure the bridge was reopened, but with the warning that it would be shut down again in a few months for further repair, reported the November 3 San Francisco Chronicle.

The failure of the bridge’s steel rods highlights the continuing crumbling of infrastructure in the United States and the failure of the federal, state, and local governments to devote resources to make necessary repairs. There are some 77,000 U.S. bridges considered structurally deficient.

On October 27 during rush hour 5,000 pounds of steel assembly and two steel tie rods crashed down on motorists crossing the bridge.

What had come crashing down was itself the patch repair of a crack in a critical structural beam done during the Labor Day weekend. Three vehicles were totaled. Miraculously there were no serious injuries or deaths.

The 73-year-old bridge, which connects San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay, is traveled daily by some 280,000 motorists.

In a September 8 press release, officials lauded the earlier repair completed ahead of schedule. Caltrans director Randell Iwasaki boasted, “The bridge has been inspected and it is now safer than when we closed it.”

Civil engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl from University of California, Berkeley refuted the safety of that repair. He called it “a Band-Aid” that was supposed to keep the fractured beam or “eyebar” together.

“The combination of the weight of the traffic and the force of the wind exceeded the capacity of this temporary repair,” he stated. “It was like the bone is broken and you put casting in so the break point doesn’t get worse and the cast doesn’t break open. But it did break open. You don’t open the bridge with a temporary fix on it.”

This is the longest closure of the bridge since the monthlong closure after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake toppled a 50-foot section.

While the bridge was closed workers had to use BART at a minimum cost of $7 per day round trip from San Francisco to Oakland or drive on other bridges in the Bay Area, which prolonged the driving time and increased heavy traffic congestion.

During the six-day closure Caltrans lost massive toll revenues and worked round-the-clock to repair the bridge.  
 
 
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