E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSI can't help but think of Rachel Maddow's "big things" spot when I look at these images of the new Bay Bridge. This is pretty darned big.
Ironworkers will climb a 35-degree slope on the 1060-foot catwalks to install four suspension cables in 2012, according to a San Francisco Chronicle story. The bridge has been under construction since 2002 with an estimated price tag of $6.3 billion and will have the world's tallest self-anchored suspension (SAS) tower once completed.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Members of the media walk on the deck of the newly constructed eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during a media tour of the self-anchored suspension span tower on August 29 in Oakland, California. Construction crews have erected twelve foot wide catwalks that connect to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension span's tower and crews will begin to lay the nearly one mile of main cable beginning in early 2012. The bridge has been under construction since 2002 with an estimated price tag of $6.3 billion and will have the world's tallest self-anchored suspension (SAS) tower once completed.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Catwalks hang over a section of the newly constructed eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during a media tour of the self-anchored suspension span tower on August 29 in Oakland, California.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
A worker stands on the bottom of a 1,060-foot catwalk that hangs over the newly constructed eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during a media tour of the self-anchored suspension span tower on August 29 in Oakland, California.
View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
A model of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension span tower is on display inside the CalTrans public information office on August 29 in Oakland, California.
Check out a previous post on the Bay Bridge.
Leave a Comment:
They couldn't pay me enough! Those are some brave people...
You have no idea how high and scary this is! I rode my motorcycle over the old bridge and could see down to the water thru the slats on the highway! IT WAS SCARY! this is 100x scarier.
There is no way I would get up there. There is a very fine line between Brave and Stupid you decide.
I'd be spending all my wages on new underwear.
Anyone out there with the courage to be an underwater welder? Don't ask me how you weld underwater but I live in Michigan directly under the Blue Water Bridges to Canada and was told that they make beaucoup bucks!
10 years to build... WTF!
Rachel Maddow said only the federal government could do a job like this! WRONG! This was built by the private sector which will finish it 6 months ahead of schedule. If the federal government was in charge it would be 2 years behind schedule and 50 billion over budget! You just don't get it do you. Get out of the way of the private sector and we will get out of this stagnet economy that this administration has gotten us into.
I wonder, were there bids taken to do this job, or, how was the government contract awarded to build this?
The original Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hoover dam were all depression era, government sponsored projects that were built by private construction consortiums. They all were completed early and under budget. Compare these with Boston's infamous Big Dig. It was managed(or mismanaged) by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, a quasi-government agency created by the state of Massachusetts. Construction started in 1991 with completion scheduled for completion in 1998 at a cost of 2.8 billion dollars. It was finally declared complete in 2007 after misspending 14.6 billion. The project was plagued by steady reports of shoddy work, use of substandard materials, safety violations, and graft. A ten million post-constructon project was necessary to fix hundreds of leaks in the system's tunnels. Then there was the incident in 2006 where a three ton concrete panel fell off the ceiling of an overpass and killed a motorist. This is how big government operates.
Jobs are few and far between. You have to save your cash because you dont know if you will work again.
no david seaman you don't get it: this is a federally funded project, payed for by taxing people and then redistributing the money , or wealth as you might like to say, your hard earned tax dollars, to be spent on public infrastructure. this is your federal tax dollars at work. if we waited for the private sector, we'd still be crossing the bay in oar powered ferry boats. get real.
Is this the one that we outsourced to China?
The bridge spans were manufactured in China!