San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Update

Smooth Move: Massive New Bay Bridge Deck Segment Slides Into Place With Ease

Tricky Labor Day weekend operation races to an early finish, with 11 hours to spare

September 5, 2007
So smooth, it was like sliding in a drawer. That’s how one local news organization described the delicate process of rolling in a new 6,500-ton segment of the upper deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge over Labor Day weekend. The operation also was remarkably fast, with the installation taking a little under three hours, about half the time originally predicted. In fact, nearly every aspect of the complex retrofit-by-replacement just to the east of the Yerba Buena Island Tunnel was so well-orchestrated that Caltrans and the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) were able to shave 11 hours off the schedule, and reopen the bridge to traffic at 6 p.m. on Labor Day proper — far ahead of the original deadline of 5 a.m. on Tuesday.

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Yerba Buena Island Viaduct Labor Day Operation in Photos

Photos by Noah Berger (Click to enlarge in new window)

At 8 p.m. Friday, at the start of Labor Day weekend, Caltrans and the CHP shut down the Bay Bridge. For the next 70 hours, both the upper and lower decks were eerily empty, save for construction crews’ vehicles and the trucks hauling debris away from the construction zone near the Yerba Buena Island Tunnel.
Using massive claws and jackhammers, crews cut the old deck into multiton chunks, leaving a neat hole the size of a football field.
The pressure was on to quickly remove debris from the lower deck so that rails could be laid to facilitate the deck move.
The retrofit-by-replacement strategy called for completely building a new deck piece just south of the current bridge (shown here to the right of the bridge), and then sliding the slab into place.	C.C. Myers, CEO of the construction firm that bears his name, can add another notch to his belt of “challenging freeway construction jobs delivered way ahead of schedule,” the other being a key element of the fire-damaged MacArthur Maze back in May of 2007.
Crews used hydraulic lifts to raise the deck to clear the columns; the lifts then slid along rails laid across the lower deck until the new piece was firmly in place.	Caltrans Director Will Kempton fields questions from the media
While the noisy, dusty 24-hour operation proceeded on Yerba Buena Island, life went on at the adjacent Treasure Island, where four weddings took place over the holiday weekend. The wedding parties were given special access to the closed bridge.	Late on Sunday night, MTC/BATA Commissioners Amy Worth, Bill Dodd (MTC/BATA chair), Ken Yeager and Bijan Sartipi (director of Caltrans District 4) are briefed on the construction progress.
The new piece began to slide into place just past midnight on Sunday evening, traveling along special rails (center) and supported by hydraulic lifts (right).
Taking advantage of the extended bridge closure, BATA and Caltrans staff used the holiday weekend to reconfigure the toll plaza, adding a peak-hour FasTrak®-only lane.	The closed bridge also was an opportunity to undertake other bridge maintenance, including painting.
Like new: Now that the piece is firmly in place, there’s little evidence of the frenzy of activity over the weekend. Not only is the new Yerba Buena Island viaduct improving the seismic safety of the current bridge, the piece also will be a key piece of the new East Span, which is now under construction to the north of the existing span. In essence, this is the first piece of the new bridge to carry traffic.
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Tricky Labor Day weekend operation (continued)

There were many heroes helping to deliver the tricky project, not the least of which were the 250 or so intrepid construction workers, truck drivers and big-equipment operators who toiled around the clock over the three-day weekend. Then there’s the man presiding over it all, C.C. Myers, the larger-than-life figure who heads the construction firm that bears his name.

“We’re risk takers, but we always make our schedules,” said a confident Myers on Saturday afternoon, no doubt referring to his firm’s near-miraculous performance in speedily rebuilding a key element of the fire-damaged MacArthur Maze in Oakland this past May. Behind him, crews worked at a fast clip with massive mechanical claws and equally massive jackhammers to demolish the old deck section and haul away the multiton chunks of rebar-and-concrete debris. The challenging task required precision aim to avoid damaging the new deck columns standing just a few feet away from the old deck.

Kudos also are due to the Caltrans public information staff, who did their utmost to alert travelers up and down the state about the bridge closure well in advance of the Labor Day weekend, and to the transit operators that beefed up service, particularly the ferry systems and BART. Bay Area residents did their civic duty by cutting back on driving and hopping on transit to partake of the weekend’s rich cultural offerings, from a Summer of Love commemorative concert in Golden Gate Park to the Art & Soul festival in Oakland.

BART, which took the unusual step of offering all-night service to 14 stations, reported record ridership. While there were some bottlenecks here and there, Bay Area freeway travel was generally light, and the doomsday scenario of regional gridlock never materialized.

By late Sunday evening, crews had carved a neat, football-field-sized hole out of the upper deck, and had laid rails across the lower deck. Just after midnight, the new steel rebar-and-concrete slab, which had been built over a period of several months to the south of the existing deck, started to roll across the rails with a slim margin of a mere three inches on each side.

“The new viaduct to the tunnel improves the seismic safety of the current bridge, and eventually will hook up to the new East Span that’s under construction to the north of the existing bridge,” said Andrew Fremier, deputy director for BATA, which is staffed by MTC.

Taking advantage of the extended bridge closure, BATA and Caltrans staff used the holiday weekend to reconfigure the toll plaza, adding a peak-hour FasTrak®-only lane (for a total of eight) and extending striping so as to separate cash payers from those paying their tolls electronically a full 2,600 feet back from the toll plaza, more than four times longer than the previous approach. Newly installed signage also will help guide drivers to the correct lane, and minimize weaving.

At 2 p.m. on Monday — Labor Day proper — Caltrans and BATA held a press conference where they made a dramatic announcement: Instead of requiring the full 81 hours allotted for the job, the bridge would open by 6 p.m. that day, some 70 hours from the start of construction (8 p.m. the prior Friday). With the announcement, the few glitches that had threatened the operation, from a shortage of trucks to haul away debris, to tougher-than-expected rebar that slowed the initial demolition, faded into distant memory.

“It was an amazing accomplishment,” said Caltrans Director Will Kempton.
— Brenda Kahn