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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCalifornia: Bay Bridge’s troubled China connection
How Caltrans choice of an inexperienced company left structural doubts and cost taxpayers
Charles Piller cpiller@sacbee.com Sunday, June 8, 2014
Beneath the suspension span. The bridge tower, seen through gaps between the roadway girders, holds up 28 girders and their connecting crossbeams, some of which suffered weld cracks during construction.
The Chinese company hired to build key parts of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge had never built a bridge. Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co. Ltd., after all, was a manufacturer of giant cranes for container ports...
...The litany of Bay Bridge problems exposed in recent years by The Sacramento Bee and others includes suspect foundation concrete, broken anchor rods and rust on the suspension spans main cable. Yet beyond those investigative findings, bridge engineers say, the decision to hire ZPMC will haunt the new span and the traveling public for generations to come..
...Caltrans asked an outside expert to assess whether ZPMC could do the job, and Jim Merrill, a senior materials contractor for the bridge project, gave the company a contingent pass. He also labeled it high risk. Among other problems, ZPMC didnt have enough qualified welders or inspectors, the audit noted, and routinely welded in the rain, a basic error that often causes defects....
...Caltrans employees and U.S. contractors who supervised the job lived fulltime in Shanghai, and top officials flew there often. Tony Anziano, toll bridge program manager, alone spent more than $300,000 on travel...
Full article: http://www.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/sinclair.jquery/baybridge/index.html
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Maybe one day the US will be able to build its own bridges again. Or, maybe not.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)nationalize the fed
(2,169 posts)This is what you get when you hire people on other continents to build bridges that jobless people will sleep under
New Bay Bridge shows signs of rust in critical areas
By Charles Piller cpiller@sacbee.com
Published: Saturday, Apr. 12, 2014
Some of the most vulnerable and integral cable sections and rods on the new $6.5 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are rusting.
The bridge suspension span and iconic tower rely on an unusual design: A single cable, comprising 137 steel strands, loops over the tower and under the bridge to hold it up. That cable is secured on the eastern edge of the span, inside chambers designed to keep out water and marine air to prevent corrosion...
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/12/6319522/new-bay-bridge-shows-signs-of.html