Articles tagged with: closure

Caltrans says the Bay Bridge will be closed “indefinitely” for emergency repairs after steel components fell from the superstructure onto the upper deck of the bridge Tuesday afternoon, hitting three vehicles.

Commuters are strongly encouraged to plan alternatives for Wednesday’s commute, or stay home if possible.

A potential Bay Area commute nightmare – one where roadways were gridlocked with traffic at a standstill and public transit vehicles full to the brim – never came to be Tuesday after a Herculean effort to repair a cracked piece of steel on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge proved to be fruitful overnight.

At 6:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, an hour after the original targeted reopening time of the Bay Bridge had lapsed, Caltrans engineers held an impromptu news conference to announce that the bridge would be reopening early – in one hour at 7:00 a.m. because bridge crews had effectively worked to repair a damaged eyebar that threatened to create commuting chaos in the Bay Area all day.

Bay Area transportation officials met over the Labor Day holiday to come up with a last-minute plan to keep the region moving without the Bay Bridge come Tuesday morning.

Caltrans officials announced Monday afternoon that a cracked “eyebar” – discovered during an inspection of the bridge by work crews – would keep the bridge closed past the original 5 a.m. Tuesday reopening time.

Caltrans is expected to announce Sunday afternoon whether a structural flaw in the eastern span of the Bay Bridge will prevent the bridge from being reopened to traffic on Tuesday morning as scheduled.

Inspectors discovered “a significant crack” in an eyebar up in the superstructure of the cantilever section of the bridge Saturday, said Caltrans spokesperson Bart Ney at a news conference Saturday night.

After years of planning and months of warnings, the Bay Bridge will close for four days starting Thursday evening, severing direct transbay auto access between Oakland and San Francisco.

BAY BRIDGE CLOSURE TWITTER UPDATES: Follow @californiabeat for up-to-the-minute updates during the Friday morning commute through the Labor Day weekend for traffic and construction updates.

At 8 p.m. on the dot, Caltrans will cone off access to the approaches to the bridge in West Oakland and San Francisco’s South of Market Area. That means for the first time since the 1989 earthquake, Friday commuters will have no access to the Bay Bridge.

The eastbound bore of the Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco was closed for most of Thursday after a truck hauling a fork lift struck the ceiling mid-way through and tore off a portion of the rooftop tiles.

The incident happened at around 11:00 a.m. creating a mild traffic jam as motorists were detoured around the tunnel. The back-up grew as the afternoon commute hour neared and motorists were stuck trying to find alternative routes to head east.