UPDATED
One of the raps against the Schwarzenegger administration is the lack of attention to details on matters affecting the daily life of Californians. The emergency closure of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is the latest example. The bridge was shut down after two rods and a crossbar broke Tuesday evening, with a couple of tons of the bridge landing in the traffic lanes.
This was the result of shoddy construction over Labor Day on work overseen by the state Department of Transportation. Caltrans has no idea when the bridge will reopen, even with crews working around the clock to repair the latest damage. This afternoon a Caltrans spokesman said motorists should not plan on using the Bay Bridge for their Monday morning commute.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger needs to assure Californians that he's taking the Bay Bridge fiasco seriously and will move quickly to see that that state's infrastructure isn't endangering residents. This should be a wake-up call to fix the state's bridges, levees and related infrastructure. The state's politicians invariably wait for a crisis before fixing infrastructure problems. Why haven't we heard more from Schwarzenegger on this?
But it seems that it's business as usual in Sacramento. I'd like to see a little more sense of urgency out of the governor. What other bridges, levees and freeways are about to fail? Where is the independent investigation of the Bay Bridge construction problems?
The article makes it appear as if Caltrans did the repair work. The main contractor on the repair was C.C. Myers.