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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

April/May 2003

salmonProject Update
Fish-Friendly Bridge Project Forges Ahead

Construction crews are nearing the end of the first phase of foundation work for the new Benicia-Martinez Bridge. By July, they will have driven approximately 100 eight-foot-diameter steel piles — each up to 164 feet in length — deep into the waters and bedrock of the Carquinez Strait. The next step will be to drill deeper still, through the hollow center of the piles, anchoring the foundations as much as 300 feet below the surface of the water.

Benicia-Martinez Bridge
Crews are logging long hours driving piles for the new
Benicia-Martinez Bridge.(Photo: Caltrans)

The crews are playing catch-up, having been idle for several months last winter while state and federal environmental resource agencies, Caltrans and MTC — in its role as the Bay Area Toll Authority — looked for a way to protect fish in the strait from lethal sound waves caused by the pile-driving.

In early February, the go-ahead was given to use an ingenious “bubble curtain,” generated by large air compressors, to dissipate the noise and damaging shock waves. Several weeks of testing showed that the Jacuzzi-like bubble shield was working as hoped.

The delay and extra expense incurred in solving the environmental problem as well as other unexpected factors — including difficult site conditions and design modifications for the bridge’s superstructure — could raise the price tag by $250 million, bringing the total estimate to over $900 million.

Rod McMillan, MTC’s manager of Bridge and Highway Operations, noted that the escalated costs could be paid for in part out of contingency funds in the toll bridge program. Funding also could come from re-configuring other bridge projects not yet under way that, like the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, are financed by revenues from the toll increase approved by the region’s voters in 1988. “We believe we can make the necessary adjustments to fund most of these latest cost increases,” McMillan said. A contribution from a possible new bridge toll increase being pursued by state Sen. Don Perata also could help (see story).

Associated projects also are moving ahead. Work crews are pouring concrete for the new Interstate 680/I-780 interchange, widening northbound I-680 at the Marina Vista interchange and erecting steel framing for a new, expanded toll plaza on the south side of the Benicia Bridge. The existing span — which was retrofitted by Caltrans in 2002 — will be converted to four southbound-only lanes plus a new bicycle and pedestrian pathway by early 2007, following completion of the new five-lane bridge in 2006.
— Réka Goode
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