New San Francisco bridge to open with a span of issues

SANFRANCISCO— The eastern span of a Depression- era bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland was retired Wednesday night, 24 years after it partially collapsed in the magnitude- 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in1989.

But the big party once plannedforTuesday, whena majestic $ 6.4billion replacement bridge is scheduled to open, has been canceled — fitting for a project that was six years late, cost five times initial estimates and suffers from broken seismic safety bolts that some critics say render it unsafe.

Four Californiagovernors oversaw the planning of what will be the world’s largest self- anchored suspension span. Bickering over everything from the location to whether to include a bicycle path ( it does) delayed the project.

East Bay politicians including Gov. Jerry Brown, whowas Oakland’smayor at the time, pushed hard for a landmark structure that might move the workhorse San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge out of the shadow of the glamorous Golden Gate Bridge.

They got one. With its 525- foot white tower, the span rises up as a breathtaking sight. Eastbound motorists, who drove on the lower deck of the old gray bridge, will now take in wide- open views of the bay and hills.

But the cracked fasteners discovered in March have raised questions about whether the connector, which will carry as many as 280,000 vehicles a day, could withstand the next big earthquake.

A temporary retrofit is supposed to take pressure off 32 fractured bolts, some as long as 25 feet, until a permanent fix can be installed on the 2.2- mile span in December. But fears about the integrity of an additional 2,268 bolts linger, along with questions about the quality of Chinese steel used in construction and concerns about visible cracks inwelds at the base of the tower.

Unlike the old bridge, the new span was built to sway along with an earthquake rather than to resist it.

Investigative reports by several newspapers have called intoquestionwhether the new span will perform as designed.

Two engineering firms and the Federal Highway Administration examined the bolts and deemed the bridge safe.