When the Bay Bridge reopened to traffic just after 9 a.m. Monday — ending its longest closure since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake — safety became Job One for an array of transportation agencies even as angry drivers clamored for access to the span.
The California Department of Transportation and other agencies oversaw the complex repairs to a failed structural support on the east span. Inspectors from the Federal Highway Administration and two seismic engineering professors supervised the work, according to CBS5 and the San Francisco Chronicle. They halted a projected reopening over the weekend, when they found that steel parts were scraping against each other, which would lead to failure. KGO-TV reported that the inspectors tested the assembly by running trucks across the lower deck and by causing vibrations. CBS5 said inspectors manually shook the new steel rods.
That was small consolation to drivers starting across the bridge Monday. Apprehensive drivers slowed at the section where the apparatus had fallen last week.
KGO-TV said engineers would address the public Monday afternoon to discuss the safety of the repairs. They also said they would take that opportunity to update the public on the new east span, and to explain why they stuck with this particular design when others may have been on the table.
Last Tuesday, strong winds and heavy traffic dislodged a 2½-ton metal assembly that had been a temporary fix after workers found a cracked beam during the installation of an “S-curve” detour on Labor Day weekend. The metal parts and cables plunged into oncoming traffic, leaving no one with serious injury but wrecking two cars and a rental moving truck.
(The Examiner, looking for a human-interest angle on the saga, blogged that the owner of one of the cars, unhappy with her interim rental, hoped Lexus would give her a free replacement.)
On the even zanier side, on Friday police said that a carjacker broke through entrance barricades and drove across the bridge, with police in hot pursuit.
