Development
Bay Area drivers breathed a sigh of relief as the Bay Bridge reopened this morning just before 7 a.m. The region coped without this major thoroughfare for four and a half days, but commuters improvised and managed to avoid worst-case scenarios. Caltrans shut the bridge for a special construction project over Labor Day weekend. During safety inspections unrelated to the construction project, however, workers discovered a crack in an eyebar, a vertical steel structure with loops or “eyes” on either…
On Saturday, approximately 95 passengers attended a seismic retrofit cruise to watch the construction on the Bay Bridge. Private cruise company Celebrations on the Bay hosted the cruise. Four attendees told Oakland North why they set to sea to witness the retrofit first-hand.
Updated Sept. 7, 9 a.m. At an 8 a.m. press conference on Monday, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney announced that the Bay Bridge may not reopen tomorrow at 5 a.m. as scheduled. Ney cited unanticipated repair work on a cracked eyebar as the main source of uncertainty. “It will be a monumental challenge to have it finished by 5 a.m.,” Ney said. “This is going to take what it takes. As soon as it’s done, we’ll open the bridge.” Ney will…
The Art Murmur, Oakland’s monthly gallery walk, drew hundreds to the streets of downtown Oakland Friday despite the Labor Day holiday weekend and the closing of the Bay Bridge. New measures were undertaken by the Murmur this month to ensure safety and civility toward gallery walkers and neighborhood residents. Incidents involving disrespect toward artists and neighbors in recent months have precipitated the changes, which include a vendor check-in fee and the addition of patrolling security guards. These occurrences have raised…
Updated at 6:20 p.m. For the first time in 73 years, the boss let the Bay Bridge take a day off during the workweek. Even without the bridge, Friday’s morning commute went relatively smoothly, and no major messes were apparent by early evening. Caltrans closed the bridge at 8 p.m. last night and initiated a five-night, four-day special construction project to replace a 300-foot section of the span near Yerba Buena Island. Despite the loss of a bridge that carries…
Three East Bay residents share their plans for commuting while the Bay Bridge is closed for construction from Thursday, September 3 through Tuesday, September 8.
Seventh grade life sciences teacher Pauline Filippou is not a morning person. But this does not keep her from getting up at 6 am every morning in order to arrive at James Madison Middle School an hour before the kids show up.
As flames continued to rage elsewhere in the state, a local voter-approved wildfire prevention project for the East Bay hills moved toward implementation in Oakland last night. In the fifth in a series of six public hearings on the brush-clearing, wood-chopping Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan, three dozen citizens listened without major objection as a draft plan of the project and an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) draft were discussed. Voters in western Alameda and Contra Costa counties originally…
With the Bay Bridge closed for Labor Day weekend, the 280,000 people who usually use the bridge to cross San Francisco Bay will have to find ways to travel under, around or above it instead. Some are choosing to stay home, but the rest will crowd into BART trains, on to local ferries, or be forced to draw up alternative routes across other area bridges. John McClelland, owner of San Francisco Helicopter Tours, said that so far nobody’s asked him…