Bay Bridge could be fixed for morning commute

OAKLAND, Calif. - State transportation officials said the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge could be ready for this morning's commute as crews furiously worked overnight Thursday to finish emergency repairs.

"There is a possibility that it could be open for the morning commute," Bart Ney, state transportation spokesman, said late Thursday. "We will try. There is a possibility we will be able to finish."

However, Ney urged motorists to seek alternative routes for one more day as a precaution. Engineers spent their second full day Thursday repairing and fortifying the 73-year-old structure after 5,000 pounds of steel came crashing down onto westbound lanes during Tuesday's rush-hour commute.

The two rods and a crossbar that fell were part of major repairs done over Labor Day Weekend after state inspectors discovered a crack in an "eyebar," an important structural beam.

Repair crews have since been trying to install four new steel rods. The rods will then undergo strenuous testing, which likely will involve inspectors waiting for windy conditions to determine how the repairs will hold up.

Dale Bonner, state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency secretary, told reporters Thursday he thought the repairs would be completed sometime this morning and stopped short of saying if the bridge would open for the evening rush home.

"We're not going to open it until it's safe," Caltrans director Randy Iwasaki said after Bonner's comments.

Meanwhile, Bay area commuters faced a second day without arguably the region's most important traffic artery, as officials reported that more people chose to take public transportation or work from home.

On Thursday, ridership on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system - which travels in a tube beneath San Francisco Bay - was up 60 percent compared with a normal Thursday. That followed a busy Wednesday in which more than 437,000 people rode the system, a single-day record in BART's 37-year history.

The bridge closure led to crowded trains and heavy traffic on other roads Wednesday as some of the estimated 280,000 commuters who use the bridge daily sought alternate routes. On Thursday, traffic was noticeably lighter in San Francisco and heavier in some stretches across Oakland and the East Bay.

Tuesday evening, three cars were damaged and one motorist had minor injuries when the chunk of metal fell onto westbound lanes. The rods that broke were holding a saddle-like cap that had been installed to strengthen the cracked eyebar.

Ney said Thursday the crack in the eyebar has not gotten any bigger as a result of Tuesday's failure. Engineers thought they had fixed the problem early last month, but the repairs did not hold.

Officials say strong winds likely played a role in the bridge failure, heightening concerns by some experts about the integrity of the repair and the bridge's safety in an earthquake. The 1989 San Francisco earthquake caused a 50-foot section of the bridge's upper deck to collapse onto the deck below.

Scientists in 2008 said there is a 63 percent probability of a quake similar to the 1989 temblor in the Bay area over the next 30 years.

The main contractor on the repairs that failed, C.C. Meyers Inc., stood by its work, but deferred to Caltrans to determine why the pieces failed, spokeswoman Beth Ruyak said.

Bonner said commuters shouldn't be worried about the bridge's overall structure.

"There's no significant risk of catastrophic failure of the bridge itself," he said.