Bay Bridge Reopens after 6-day Closure (San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge)

[CreekDog]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(11-02) 09:18 PST OAKLAND -- The Bay Bridge reopened just after 9 a.m. today, six days after a repair job on a cracked structural beam on the eastern span fell apart and plunged onto the upper deck.

Tests conducted overnight and this morning on an altered version of that repair job showed that the fix was holding, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said.

At 9:01 a.m., a fleet of five California Highway Patrol cars escorted the first private vehicles allowed onto the westbound upper deck since the span was shut down Tuesday evening.
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"We're happy to be returning the Bay Bridge to public service," Ney said.
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On Tuesday evening, high winds and heavy traffic created vibrations that loosened a pair of tie rods and a steel bracket installed over the Labor Day weekend to take pressure off a fracture discovered in a structural beam - an eyebar - on the eastern span.
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Halfway through the three-hour test, workers declared the repairs a failure because the tie rods were continuing to scrape together. After taking a seven-hour break starting about midnight Saturday, work crews spent Sunday realigning the assembly and grinding and smoothing the metal parts.

During stress test late Sunday, workers used a mechanism to pull at the entire assembly, which allows them to measure the amount of strain it can withstand.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/02/BAV81ADVCG.DTL&tsp=1

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Vehicles driving on newly repaired Bay Bridge

By Robert Salonga
Contra Costa Times

Following a convoy of Highway Patrol cruisers, vehicles are driving onto the Bay Bridge this morning onramps are incrementally opened to motorists.
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The final series of bridge checks involved running trucks across the bridge to make sure that a new support segment did not weaken from everyday road vibrations.

"Vibration was the main thing we were isolating on those tie rods," Ney said. "We ran trucks on the lower deck that produced almost no effect on the system."

Ney briefly outlined features installed he said would prevent such a failure from happening again. Besides the anti-vibration measures, the tie rods have been secured so that even if a break occurs, they will stay suspended and not fall into the roadway. A news conference further detailing that repair is expected later today.

"We're going to continue to monitor this system daily," Ney said. "We are very happy to be returning the bridge safely to public service."

Traffic has been relatively light on Bay Area roadways early this morning — particularly on arteries like Interstate 880, which connects the primary alternate bridges, the San Mateo and Richmond-San Rafael bridges. This was the region's fourth straight commute morning without the Bay Bridge, and commuters gradually lightened their presence on the freeways and have packed into alternative transportation options like BART, which has experienced record ridership over the past week.

http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_13693990

CHP escorts first cars across the bridge as it reopened this morning:




A student films the reopening of the Bay Bridge from Yerba Buena Island (this is the portion that was repaired):


Cars begin to cross the repaired Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge:

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. Just returned from San Francisco yesterday and

it was a major hassle for everyone. Glad it's open.

[zogtheobvious]

2. I dunno....

I'd feel truly creepified to be driving across that bridge now. Probably nothing will ever happen, but that doesn't stop the visceral reaction from taking hold.

Fortunately, I live waaaaaaayyyy out east in Pennsyltucky (I mean Pennsyvania) so it's not ever gonna be an issue for me.