Tens of thousands of commuters who usually cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge each day were forced to come up with alternative plans for Tuesday as officials announced that work on the bridge would not be completed by morning.
“We’re going to need your patience for one more day,” Randy Iwasaki, director of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) said Monday evening. Iwasaki said the “bad news” is the work would not be completed by 5 a.m. Tuesday as expected, but that it should be finished by the same time Wednesday. The Bay Bridge was closed Thursday as part of a seismic retrofitting project that required cutting out and replacing a double-deck portion of the east span. Officials announced the delay after an inspection of the east span, where workers found a “significant crack” in an eyebar, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said. Officials believe the crack developed since the bridge was last inspected two years ago. About 280,000 vehicles cross the landmark bridge every day, according to the department. A 50-foot section of the bridge collapsed in 1989 during the Loma Prieta earthquake, prompting efforts to make it quake tolerant.
