“In the 1930s, the bridge itself was the thing people valued, and the engineers and contractors were in charge,” said Randy Rentschler, Metropolitan Transportation Commission government affairs director. The reasons behind the gap say much about how big construction projects have changed from the time of the Great Depression, when creating jobs was paramount, to the modern era where worker safety and environmental laws have an enormous influence on the design, pace and cost of what is built. Why can’t they do things the way they used to? Put another way, the entire 1936 crossing cost $30,000 a foot in adjusted 2013 dollars while the shorter new span is setting back taxpayers $550,000 per foot. Construction is taking more than twice as long, and the price tag - $6.4 billion - is 41/2 times higher than engineers estimated. And workers did it ahead of schedule and for $78 million, well under budget.ĭecades later, when the seismically shaky 2-mile eastern span needed to be replaced, California took five years just to figure out what the new span should look like and design it. OAKLAND - In the early 1930s, California designed and built the 8-mile Bay Bridge - west and east spans linked by the world’s biggest bore tunnel - in a mere 51/2 years.
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