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Bay Bridge’s troubles: How a landmark became a debacle

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

Sometime in the next few weeks, the lead contractor for the Bay Bridge’s new eastern span will finally declare that the most complex public works project in California history is done — and state and local authorities will be solely responsible for a landmark beset by problems that trace back more than 16 years, to the day a handful of experts picked a design that bordered on the experimental.

They were elite architects, engineers, seismologists and academics — but few had any experience building or designing bridges. After a yearlong process, 19 of them gathered in an auditorium in Oakland to choose between two alternatives: a conventional span resembling more than 100 bridges worldwide, and a daring design that had never been tried on such a scale.

Both would cost roughly $1.5 billion, the group was told, although the attention-grabbing span was the more expensive of the two — perhaps as much as $173 million more for a bridge that would look like no other.

“At the time, it seemed a meaningless difference” and an amount “well worth spending,” said panel member Jeffrey Heller, a high-rise architect.

It turned out, however, that the difference was much more. The final sum may not be known for decades, until the problems that cascaded from the panel’s approval of a self-anchored suspension span in 1998 — broken rods, leaks in the steel structure, cracked welds, misaligned road decks — are fixed with toll payers’ dollars.

Many of the problems are linked to the bridge’s unusual complexity, according to a panel of engineers that looked at the project last summer for the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Their report concluded that Caltrans engineers had warned at the time that the bridge would be a technical nightmare. The design panel chose the configuration, the report said, because of “aesthetics” and “without a full appreciation” of its challenges.

All but one of the bridge experts on the selection panel opposed the final design, but they were outvoted by those with no bridge knowledge or experience.

The backers of that design say the problems were never insurmountable and blame the bridge’s troubles on Caltrans mismanagement.

Sixteen-plus years after the fateful vote, panel Chairman Joe Nicoletti admitted, “I don’t think any of us foresaw all the issues.”
The panel

One of the most costly bridges ever built began, ironically, with the state’s decision that retrofitting the Loma Prieta earthquake-damaged old eastern span of the Bay Bridge wasn’t worth the expense. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which sets transit priorities for the Bay Area, named 34 people to pick a new bridge that would be only slightly more costly.

They included the builders of some of the most impressive spans in the world, including Manabu Ito of Japan, who had designed what was then the longest bridge of its kind, and Christian Menn, a pioneering designer from Switzerland renowned for his work in Europe and the U.S.