Bay Bridge closure starts 8 p.m. Thursday
When I was a child in Brooklyn, I watched as they constructed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world with a center span of 4,260 feet. I remember at the time hearing that the span was so long that the distance between the two supporting towers was greater between their tops than their bottoms because of the curvature of the earth. Construction on the bridge began August 13, 1959, and the upper deck was opened on November 21, 1964; just over five years.
The new eastern half of the Bay Bridge comprises two parts, the so-called Skyway portion, which is mostly completed, and the SAS (self-anchored suspension) portion. The SAS, with a total length of just 2047 feet, began construction in May, 2006, and is not expected to be completed until sometime in 2013 — roughly seven years, or two years longer than it took to build the entire Verrazano-Narrows Bridge five decades ago. If you also consider the Skyway, which began construction sometime in 2002, the entire project will have taken more than 11 years to build. And this does not include all the delays in the design process before construction even began.
I haven’t been able to figure out why it’s taking so long.
Regardless, you will not be able to use the Bay Bridge to drive to San Francisco (or even Yerba Buena Island) from the East Bay starting at 8 p.m. this Thursday, September 3. The bridge will be closed all Labor Day weekend, and then some. It is scheduled to reopen by 5 a.m. on Tuesday, September 8.
While the bridge is closed, a 300-foot-long, double-deck section of the East Span will be cut and rolled out of the way, 150-feet above Yerba Buena Island (YBI). A new double-deck section will be slid into place to connect the bridge with a detour that will route traffic off the existing tunnel approach, allowing crews to connect the new East Span to the YBI tunnel.
When the bridge reopens, the speed limit will be reduced to 40-mph in both directions on the detour section for the next three to four years (i.e., until the new East Span opens).
Get up to the moment information on the Bay Bridge closure at the Bay Bridge Info web site, or follow them on Twitter at @BayBridgeInfo.
Forewarned is forearmed.
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The remarkable thing about the work they’re doing on the Bay Bridge is that except for a few days every few Labor Days, the bridge is carrying a full load. That’s something the Verrazano Narrows Bridge didn’t have to do.
It’s a lot harder to upgrade than it is to create anew, that’s why engineers always would rather do something new than evolve something that’s already up and running.
And I also remember the opening of the VNB. It was a big deal in NY at the time.
Factors that likely contribute to making this project take longer include stricter engineering standards, a more ambitious design (to achieve a reasonable price point), the state of the market for steel now contrasted with then, and the fact that the Bay Bridge project has the constraint of disrupting existing traffic flows as little as possible.
Incidentally, as KRON-4 reported, there is an interesting possibility (not a likelihood but not entirely unrealistic, either) that when they cut out the old section in coming days, the adjacent sections might collapse. They’ve taken strong precautions against that but it could happen. If it does, it means that the bridge will be out for years.
Neat, huh?
The second worst thing that can go wrong is that when they try to slide out the section being removed, before they can gently lower it to the ground for disassembly, it falls apart and comes crashing to the ground. That won’t interrupt keeping the bridge open nearly as much – the general contractor describes that possible outcome as “which would be embarrassing.”
It’s interesting to note that the eastern span construction has recently encountered new delays because the steel fab in China sent over some crap work (irreparable cracks in vital welds, etc.). The shut-down of the US steel industry to globalization outsourcing in the late 60s onward had a heavy price, for which the bill is increasingly becoming presented.
-t
@Dave Winer
Sorry, Dave, but I don’t buy that excuse. While it is true that this was a factor in the construction that occurred on the West Approach portion of this seismic retrofit project, by far, most of the construction on the East Span has nothing at all to do with traffic on the existing span. The entire Skyway and SAS are being built new, alongside the current span. The only commonality is at the endpoints where they meet the tunnel through Yerba Buena Island and the existing tollbooths.
@Mark Haas
Do you have any specific allegations about the competence of the engineering and general contracting of the eastern span or are you just fishing and substituting snark for substance?
To defend dave: what do you think is easier – putting up a high-rise in an empty field or putting one up right smack next to another without disturbing the other (much) during construction?
-t
@Thomas Lord I posed a simple question: why is it taking so long? To explain why it felt to me like it was taking a long time, I presented the example of the Verrezano Bridge. There’s nothing snarky about it, what you call fishing is a actually genuine curiosity to find a legitimate answer, and I don’t like the tone of your comment suggesting otherwise. There’s no need to defend Dave because no one is attacking him. And I don’t see the point you’re trying to make about high-rise buildings, which go up quickly every day right next to each other in Manhattan and lots of other cities.
@Mark Haas
Sorry Mark. I get impatient too easily, perhaps. Your pondering of the comparison to Verrezano seems extremely naive. As I outlined above, the Bay Bridge is subject to a lot of constraints that the Verrezono project was not. There are seismic issues, the differences in the ground on which the thing is being built, the differences in construction and safety standards then v. now, the differences in labor standards, the interplay with the steel industry, the proximity to existing construction, the (multiple actor) liability issues for an already vital artery, and on and on. I really can’t fathom why basic common sense leaves you surprised at the time frames here.
As for construction in Manhattan… hey, have you heard (for example) the news about how Annie Leibovitz went bankrupt? You are armchairing in the bad sense.
-t