Free Republic

SACRAMENTO - The Bay Bridge will get a fancy design after all, but the region's motorists will pay most of the span's $3.7 billion in cost overruns under a legislative deal reached Thursday night. The accord calls for tolls on all state-owned Bay Area spans to jump from $3 to $4 beginning Jan. 1, 2007, and fund about two-thirds of the bridge's higher costs. The state will kick in $630 million toward the project, which has been saddled with delays and escalating prices since its inception seven years ago. No further toll increases are planned. Rather, the balance of cost...

Squeezed inside an enclosed box , a welder works in scorching conditions to join two steel legs that support the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. A supervisor working for the contractor checks the crucial first weld, followed by an independent inspector required to test the weld within 30 minutes. Another inspector hired by Caltrans reviews the initial inspector's paperwork to make sure everything is OK. The Caltrans-hired inspector also randomly checks about 10 percent of the welds. If substandard welds exist on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the work would have slipped by a chain...

Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration hired independent welding inspectors Monday to examine claims of shoddy and unsafe work on the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge. Mike Mayes, president of Mayes Testing Engineers of Everett, Wash., and metals consultant Roy Teal of Albany, N.Y., visited the site Tuesday for "confined space training" to access welding locations deep inside bridge foundations. The two, along with state and federal inspectors, were scheduled to examine some welds to determine what resources would be needed for a more thorough review, according to Caltrans. The state Department of Transportation has declined to offer...