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New Bay Bridge East Span Tower Peeks Above Yerba Buena Island

Photo: Barrie Rokeach

PRESS RELEASE:
Four Million Pounds of Steel to Be Hoisted in Pre-Holiday Construction

Latest Sections Will Bring SAS Tower to 71 Percent of Final 525-Foot Height


Oakland, December 15, 2010... The holidays will come early for the Bay Bridge as the third set of tower sections for the iconic Self-Anchored Suspension Span (SAS) are placed during a round-the-clock lift scheduled to begin this morning. These sections will bring the tower up to nearly three-quarters of its final 525-foot-tall height.

The latest set of four tower sections arrived in the Bay Area on December 13. The tower is made up of four independent legs, each of which is composed of five vertical sections. The third set of tower sections will bring the tower up to 374 feet tall, just shy of the original East Span’s high point of 388 feet. The new set of tower segments are 101.7-feet-tall and each one weighs approximately 1.1 million pounds. While the tower will rise nearly 38 stories above the bay, that is only 71 percent of the tower’s final height, already making it taller than Coit Tower (210 feet), the Campanile at U.C. Berkeley (307 feet) and the Tribune Tower (310 feet).When completed, the SAS will take its place on the list of iconic Bay Area landmarks.

Two strand jacks will hoist each section about 40 stories into the air, so that each segment can be moved into the erection tower just above the first two sections of the tower. Once the third section is lowered into place, crews will bolt the third and second sections together using splice plates.

Crews will work around the clock, using two 12-hour shifts, to erect all four tower sections; it takes approximately 30 hours to lift, place and bolt each section and then lower the strand jacks into position before the next section can be lifted. The work is expected to be completed during the week of December 19.

Crews placed the first tower sections onto the foundation in July 2010, and the second set in October 2010. The arrival of the final group of tower sections is expected in February 2011.

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December 14, 2010
After 28 days crossing the wintery Pacific Ocean from Shanghai, the third shipment of tower sections for the self-anchored suspension span (SAS) of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge East Span passed under the Golden Gate and into San Francisco Bay on December 13. Also loaded aboard the Zhen Hua 19 were two more steel deck sections for the new span, and first pieces of the bicycle/pedestrian path to be delivered to the job site.

The SAS tower is actually comprised of four individual legs, each of which is made up of five vertical sections, or lifts. This third lift contains four legs that are 102-feet-tall and weigh 551 tons each. Once this third installment is placed, the tower will stand 374 feet tall – 40 feet above the high-point of Yerba Buena Island, and nearly three-quarters of the way toward its final height of 525 feet.

Contractor American Bridge/Fluor plans to start the erection of these tower sections as early as Wednesday, and to work around the clock until complete, in time for Christmas. The painstaking process involves tilting each leg from horizontal to vertical on a specially-designed barge positioned at the tower’s base, and then hoisting the legs over 400 feet into the air before lowering and bolting them atop the tower. (See previous story about lifting process.)

Meanwhile, the SAS road decks have been taking shape since February, with 18 deck sections – nine eastbound and nine westbound – already in place. The deck sections that arrived with yesterday’s shipment are each almost 160 feet in length, and weigh over 1,000 tons each. When the bridge opens, there will be 28 deck sections in total.

The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) — along with Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission — is part of Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee (TBPOC), which has been overseeing the seismic retrofit of state-owned toll bridges in the Bay Area, including the Bay Bridge. BATA is also responsible for collecting bridge tolls and funding the retrofits.

— Karin Betts

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