New Bay Bridge eastern span tower going up

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The installation of the Bay Bridge tower was expected to being Wednesday. Rendering courtesy of the California Department of Transportation.

The expansion of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project hit a new milestone on Wednesday when Caltrans workers began raising one of the four new towers to support the suspension span.

KTVU reports the tower is 155-feet tall and weighs 1,190 tons. The piece arrived from Shanghai on June 18 and eventually made it to the Port of Oakland the following month. Inspectors checked the tower to make sure there was no damage during its voyage to the Bay. 

“This part of the bridge is designed to be iconic, and this tower has got a lot of architectural features built into it that take it beyond an A-to-B workman bridge that the Bay Bridge is known for,” said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation.

The installation of each tower should take approximately take 12 hours, according to Caltrans. The entire project is expected to be completed by 2013.

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Self-anchored suspension tower fact sheet. Source: Caltrans.

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