AASHTO Journal, 6 September 2013
California Department of Transportation celebrated a massive achievement this week as it opened the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to traffic, almost 25 years after an earthquake caused extensive damage to the bridge, prompting decades of repairs.
The new $6.4 billion span is designed to handle the most powerful earthquakes, including that of a 1,500-year event as estimated by seismologists. The original bridge, which opened in 1936, was damaged in 1989 during the 7.1-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake caused the upper deck at pier E9 on the bridge to fail and crash into the lower deck, causing that to also fail. Construction on the new Bay Bridge began in 2002. Late Monday night, the bridge opened to the vehicles that had lined up to be of the first on the long-anticipated bridge, which Caltrans expects to carry about 280,000 vehicles each day.
“The new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is a testament to incredible engineering skill, architectural innovation and our commitment to safety,” said Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty. “The opening of this iconic bridge is a monumental occasion—a day that will go down in history.”
Those interested may follow news of the Bay Bridge on Twitter, Facebook, various podcasts available on the iTunes store (by searching “Bay Bridge”), and the Bay Bridge Explorer mobile application.
Additional information on the Bay Bridge project is available at BayBridgeInfo.org.
