Million-dollar bill for 10-inch crack under San Mateo Bridge

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Call it the million-dollar crack.
Bay Area transportation officials said Friday it cost $1 million to fix the 10-inch crack found under the San Mateo Bridge last month, and the price tag may climb.
Revenues from bridge tolls paid by drivers around the Bay Area will fund the repairs, at a clip of $100,000 per inch. With tolls at $5, it would hypothetically take 200,000 drivers crossing the region's seven state-owned bridges to pay for the fix.
A report from the agency that manages the bridges says the crack, discovered during a routine inspection on Oct. 13, was fixed when crews sandwiched it between new plates of steel. It took four days to complete the work, while the lane above the crack was closed to traffic for safety reasons.
Why such a big bill?
Caltrans and its contractor conducted the work, but the agency's spokesman for the project referred comment on Friday to the Bay Area Toll Authority, which pays for maintenance of the region's bridges. A toll authority spokesman did not return calls for comment Friday.
A report from toll authority Executive Director Steve Heminger outlines the transfer of funds to pay for the crack repairs but does not explain why it cost so much. It does say, however, that Caltrans still does not know the cause of the damage and may have to do more work on the area depending on the results of its investigation.
The report said the crack was found in a "wishbone-shaped support beam" that was added to the bridge as part of a seismic retrofit project completed in 1999. It says crews "worked around the clock" to fix the damage, which was found under the far right westbound lane just east of the high-rise on the Peninsula side of the 7-mile span.
Heminger's report says the money spent on the repairs won't affect funding for other projects the agency is working on, such as retrofits to the Bay, Dumbarton and Antioch bridges.
Contact Mike Rosenberg at 650-348-4324.


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