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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

May/June 2006

New East Span: Bold, Beautiful and Back on Track After More Than a Year of Delays

Deck lift
Crews lift the massive, 1,700-ton steel transitional deck segment that will join the eastbound Skyway with the self-anchored suspension span. (Photo: Bill Hall, Caltrans)

Aerial view

The Skyway is taking shape just north (and in this photo, to the right) of the existing East Span. (Photo: Bill Hall, Caltrans)

Will Kempton

Against a cloth backdrop with a rendering of the new East Span, Caltrans Director Will Kempton signs the contract award letter. (Photo: Noah Berger)

Bid for Tower Element Comes in Under Budget

It takes gargantuan tools to build a public works project on the scale of the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. But in April, it was a simple pen that put the mega project back on track and headed for completion by 2013. At a bayside ceremony, Caltrans Director Will Kempton affixed his signature to a letter awarding, at last, the contract for the self-anchored suspension span (SAS) that will be the crowning piece of the new East Span.

The signing ceremony coincided with the centennial of the 1906 great San Francisco earthquake. The timing emphasized that the new East Span is first and foremost a seismic safety project.

“The bridge’s funding is secure and we have a good bid. We’re able to start work,” Kempton said.

Standing by his side at the historic event, which took place at a San Francisco pier with a TV-perfect view of the existing Bay Bridge, were Steve Heminger, executive director of MTC and its Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA), and John Barna, executive director of the California Transportation Commission (CTC). The two agencies have joined with Caltrans to form the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee (TBPOC), which is charged with delivering the East Span within the revised budget and schedule established by the state Legislature in the summer of 2005.

“All great bridges set new standards for innovation. We expect this bridge will do the same,” said Heminger.

The bold and technically challenging SAS was put on hold for many months while the state re-bid the construction contract in an effort to bring down costs. A collective sigh of relief was nearly audible among the TBPOC members when the process yielded two solid bids on March 22.

Less than 30 days later, on April 18, Caltrans officials awarded the contract to the lower bidder, a joint-venture team of Pennsylvania-based American Bridge and Fluor Enterprises of Aliso Viejo, Calif. Their price of $1.43 billion is within the Caltrans engineers’ updated estimate for the project of $1.45 billion. Moreover, American Bridge played a major role in building the Bay Bridge back in the 1930s.

The new East Span is taking shape just to the north of the seismically weak existing East Span, which fractured in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Already, the Skyway portion of the new East Span is more than 85 percent complete, and juts a mile or so into the Bay from the Oakland shore.

Featuring a single tower rising 525 feet above the waterline, the SAS will connect the Skyway with Yerba Buena Island.

The East Span is scheduled to open to vehicle traffic in the westbound direction in 2012 and in the eastbound direction in 2013. Contractor incentives can potentially shorten the overall project construction by up to six months.

“We are looking forward to having a seismically safe bridge, and a stunning addition to the region’s skyline,” said the CTC’s Barna.
— Brenda Kahn

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