(Bay Bridge) Oakland touchdown contract advertised

[J N Winkler]

Fresh from this week's Attachment A:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/weekly_ads/attach_a.php

Link for this particular contract remains good only through 9 PM PST next Monday--link to actual documentation:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/project_ads_addenda/04/04-0120M4/

This contract will build the Oakland touchdown to connect the East Span viaduct to the existing bridge approach roadway just west of the tollbooths.  The fact that it is being advertised at all is a sign that the East Span project as a whole is winding down.  The saga has been long, the cost has been astronomical, and the extent of the detail has been so massive I have forgotten most of it (shades of the Schleswig-Holstein question), but I believe it was in 2001--ten years ago--that Caltrans made its first attempt to advertise the entire East Span as a single construction contract.  That had to be abandoned because no contractor could be bonded for a project that large in the wake of September 11, and then there were cost escalations and the whole self-anchored-suspension-span fiasco in 2003-2004.

Back in 2003 or 2004 I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and discovered that the real cost of the East Span (as then projected) was five times the construction cost of the entire original Bay Bridge in 1936 ($5.2 billion versus $1.02 billion, 2003 dollars).  To give Caltrans credit, however, the new East Span will have far greater seismic capacity and has so far been built at much less risk of injury to the workers.

As part of its new advertising procedures (in effect since April 2010), Caltrans now routinely puts materials handouts and permitting documentation online along with the plans and proposals.  The permitting on this contract fills three-quarters of a single-sided DVD.