Posted on 08/19/2004 10:15:44 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to stick the Bay Area with $2.5 billion in Bay Bridge overruns fails to acknowledge that the state's miscalculation of the true costs, not the span's design, created the problem.
Schwarzenegger's staff says the Bay Area's desire for a fancy signature span instead of a plain skyway is a major contributor to the fourfold cost increase on the new Bay Bridge.
But Caltrans repeatedly missed the mark with its cost estimates that Bay Area decision-makers relied on in picking the bridge design.
When the Bay Area selected the suspension design in 1998, Caltrans said it would cost $170 million more than a skyway. That amounted to 13 percent of the $1.3 billion bridge budget.
The Bay Area agreed to pay the extra cost and extended tolls 15 months to cover it.
Estimates skyrocket
But in six short years, Caltrans' estimates to build the bridge skyrocketed fourfold to $5.1 billion, and the suspension span segment now accounts for nearly a third of the budget.
The governor and Southern California legislators want the Bay Area, not the rest of the state, to pay.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
He's got my vote on that.
yeah..govment works.
To h*** with the SF Bay Area. I grew up there, and thankfully moved out. As far as I'm concerned, the entire region is full of pretentious and arrogant nitwits. It's a hellhole. The Bay Area is part of "Blue America," and reflects all of the elitism and "we-know-better-than-you" attitude of American liberalism. Let them figure out how to solve their own problems. Let them eat gridlock!
When the Orange County Transit Authority purchased the 91 Toll Lanes through Santiago Canyon, it was meant to eliminate the poorly conceived "non-compete" clause that prohibited fixing of the traffic bottle-neck outside of the toll lanes. The purchase of the toll lanes was financed by the OCTA and is being repaid through the collection of tolls. Let the people who take advantage of these improvements pay for them.
I don't understand how it went from tolls paying for bridges in the first place. The Vincent Thomas bridge in LA harbor had a toll booth for years, until the price was paid. Funny, they never removed the toll booths in the Bay Area.
The Bay Area, among others, has received a disproportionate share of money from the state ever since Prop 13 caused the state to start taking property tax revenue and redistributing it. Pay for your own stinking bridge, you liberal banditos.
They picked a suspension bridge instead of a steel truss bridge because the suspension bridge was prettier. Now they're complaining that the suspension bridge costs to much. I have no sympathy, whatsoever. Having let aesthetics drive the design to such a ridiculous degree, they deserve whatever they get.
You don't put up suspension bridges just for the hell of it. They span long distances over deep water with no available footings and busy ship traffic lanes. None of these conditions applied to the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge. The suspension bridge selection counts as the World's largest public art project since the pyramids, and now folks are complaining when the bill comes due.
It is really sad to me, the way this has all come down. The previous design of the Bay Bridge, with the graceful suspension spans on the San Francisco side and the more utilitarian steel truss spans on the Oakland side, was an accident driven by the design conditions that just happened to reflect the character of the two cities. Now the engineering is being ignored because all cities have to be equal when it comes to bridge construction, and an accidentally beautiful representation of the objective reality is lost. Now Oakland will have a beautiful bridge leading toward Oakland, but the bridge is not actually all that close to Oakland. All for the low, low price of $4,000,000,000.00.
I'm a Bay Area native and my family had the incredible foresight to leave by the time I became a teenager. I missed going to Giants games and driving to l.a. to watch Raider games as a kid, and my dad missed free society. So it was a bit of a tradeoff.
Oh, and what a great slogan for the GOP: Pics of derelicts and bums, slumlords doing business and the latest news of a drive by in Hunter's Point and then end it with "Don't Let This Happen To You: Vote Republican." :)
WORK DELAYED BY DEBATE
The bridge's fate has been debated ever since a section of the eastern span collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, killing one person. A fight between Caltrans on the one hand and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and the Navy on the other over the route of the new structure delayed the project's launch by two years.
But that delay accounts for only part of the cost increase, according to state transportation sources. They cite everything from rising steel costs and a shortage of labor to the sheer difficulty of making the span safe in this quake-prone region.
But most of all, they point the finger at the Bay Area's own demands for more -- much more -- than the single viaduct, gray concrete structure that the state was originally contemplating.
Instead, locals asked for a sleeker design that featured two towers, white concrete, a bike lane and pedestrian lookout platforms.
Sources say all these extras helped push up the cost in excess of $1 billion.
As one bridge planner told us, "They went from your basic Chevy bridge to your 'Beamer,' and with it, the cost went up."
Still, that doesn't totally account for the current cost projections. A recent federal study found the cost of bridge construction last year rose an average of 18 percent nationwide and predicted annual 15 percent increases in the coming years.
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