Skip to main content

Delay to SF-Oakland Bay Bridge East Span opening and probe report

The Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee (TBPOC) today said that the previously scheduled Labor Day (2 Sep) opening of the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been postponed. News of the delayed opening was announced at the same time as TBPOC released its investigative report into the 32 bolts that broke on the Bay Bridge in March 2013, and its review of other bolts on the bridge. The contractor now forecasts that the steel saddle retrofit of the failed bolts on the east pier will b
July 9, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee (TBPOC) today said that the previously scheduled Labor Day (2 Sep) opening of the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been postponed.

News of the delayed opening was announced at the same time as TBPOC released its investigative report into the 32 bolts that broke on the Bay Bridge in March 2013, and its review of other bolts on the bridge.

The contractor now forecasts that the steel saddle retrofit of the failed bolts on the east pier will be completed by 10 December 2013. TBPOC will select a bridge opening date based upon actual completion of the east pier retrofit work, weather windows, traffic impacts and other information as it becomes available. The bridge opening may or may not coincide with a Monday holiday weekend and may involve shorter advance notice to the public than prior closures.

A four-day full closure of the existing bridge is said to be necessary to complete construction work at the Oakland touchdown and Yerba Buena Island tunnel in order to transition traffic from the old span to the new one.

The TBPOC’s final investigative report lays out at length the chronology of events and assigns proper responsibility as warranted. The findings, and all other information contained in the report, can be found at websites for the Bay Bridge, 5246 Caltrans and the 7419 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. In addition to the report, thousands of additional pages of documentation and records have also been posted on those websites.

There will be a public briefing at a special meeting of the Bay Area Toll Authority on July 10 at 10am at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission offices at 101 8th Street in Oakland, where a discussion will take place and questions from the public, elected officials and the media will be answered by members of the TBPOC and by members of the Seismic Safety Peer Review Panel.

The meeting will be audio-cast online at: %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal http://www.mtc.ca.gov/meetings/schedule/ http://www.mtc.ca.gov/meetings/schedule/#sthash.xyefTJfV.dpuf false http://www.mtc.ca.gov/meetings/schedule/#sthash.xyefTJfV.dpuf false false%>

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • IPMA provides video on in-place recycling of road surfaces (VIDEO)
    July 4, 2013
    This video from International Pavement Management (IPMA) discusses hot in-place surface recycling job sites in the US state of Georgia. Presenter Blair Barnhardt talks to Brian Frix from Rockdale County and Mike Lehner from Cobb County DOT about their successes with their pavement management programmes.
  • UK: Work starts on Mersey Gateway main bridge deck
    June 2, 2016
    Work has started on 2.2km Mersey Gateway’s main bridge deck as the project enters its third year of construction. The new six-lane toll bridge will link the English towns of Runcorn and Widnes and teams will begin to connect the steel support cables to the deck and upper pylons this summer. Trinity, the project’s movable scaffolding system (MSS), has cast the first 250m of the north approach viaduct and a new MSS is on its way to Halton to build the south approach viaduct. The local road network is al
  • PPRS event: Road users’ concerns at the heart of the programme
    December 19, 2014
    Europeans are in two minds about whether their road transport has improved in the past five years, according to the latest European Commission’ Eurobarometer survey and report. According to 38% of respondents, road transport quality had gone up, but 40% said it had dropped, while 18% said there had been no change. Whatever the opinion on quality, 60% of respondents to the report’s survey considered congestion to be the most serious issue facing Europe’s roads. The survey highlighted the dominance o
  • FHWA’s weather guidelines for road users
    August 21, 2012
    The tremendous growth in the amount of available weather and road condition information—including devices that gather weather information, models and forecasting tools for predicting weather conditions, and electronic devices used by travellers — has led the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to develop effective and specific guidelines for communicating road weather information in a way that is consistent with what travellers need, want, and will use when making travel decisions.