How do you learn from a really big mistake?

Walk across it.

Which is why I recently found myself putting on a windbreaker and beginning a long, slow walk across the east span of the Bay Bridge, from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island. This piece of the bridge, completed in 2013, is probably the biggest California mistake of the last generation. The east span was completed a decade late, cost seven times more than official projections, and remains dogged by serious safety concerns.

However, the bridge does have one virtue: It holds lessons for the future, as California faces massive challenges that will necessitate big projects. Indeed, after eight years of the cautious, small-bore governorship of Jerry Brown, new state leaders are preparing to take on big initiatives on infrastructure, taxation, and early childhood.

Before they do, they should read a recently published book I brought on my bridge walk: A Tale of Two Bridges, by Stephen D. Mikesell, a Davis-based historian who previously served as deputy historic preservation officer for the state. Mikesell compares the original 1936 Bay Bridge with the troubled 2013 east span, but his book is really about the special challenges of megaprojects—that is, complex and controversial initiatives costing more than $1 billion.

Today’s cynical conventional wisdom is that big projects are nearly impossible to carry off, and that those that do go forward are destined to fail. But Mikesell argues otherwise. He explains that the original 1936 Bay Bridge met conditions for successful megaprojects.

First, local and state leaders built broad consensus about the purpose and need for the project: constructing a bridge from San Francisco to Oakland was clearly a game-changer for the region in that era. Second, political people made the political decisions about the bridge, and technical people made the technical decisions. While a politically appointed commission approved the bridge and its budget, the details of design and construction were left to technical experts brought in from all over the country. Third, costs were estimated accurately and the bridge came in under budget. And finally, the bridge builders used proven methods for construction and materials, emphasizing functionality rather than trying to make an artistic statement.

The 2013 eastern span didn’t pass all these tests, Mikesell writes. The bridge was a divisive political issue for years. Cost estimates were way off. Technical decisions about bridge design and engineering were made through political processes. And the crucial political decision—to build an expensive new span instead of a less costly retrofit of the old span—was made inside Caltrans. Who were these decisionmaker? Shockingly, Mikesell, a seasoned expert on bridges, writes that the process was so messy it’s impossible to identify exactly who was responsible.

Ultimately, warnings from leading bridge engineers were ignored as Bay Area political leaders chose what they saw as the most visually attractive bridge—a self-anchored suspension bridge—even though this less common design created all sorts of problems.

To walk the span today is to get a firsthand sense of a bridge gone wrong. The walkway itself offers the first clue: It’s on the wrong side of the bridge, the south side, which means that you get a view of the port of Oakland. If the walkway had been on the north-facing side, better views of the north bay, and even the Golden Gate, might have been possible. The walk is also polluted from the passing cars. I was often startled by loud noises from trucks hitting seams on the bridge; the eastbound traffic is so close it feels like it might run you over.

It took me nearly an hour to walk from a small parking lot at the Bay Bridge Trail entry point on Burma Road to the bridge’s signature tower and curve. There is nothing particularly beautiful or interesting about this tower and the cables attached to it. That’s a shame, since this is the section of the bridge that created most of the cost overruns. The tower is also the site of many structural problems, including saltwater intrusion into the foundation, damage to anchor rods, and substandard welds.

The bridge is also a failure because of what it didn’t do. Big projects should be transformational. But this span isn’t. It didn’t increase the bridge capacity or improve traffic flows. It is no artistic masterpiece. Paying for it actually raised bridge tolls. And prominent engineers argue that the new span may be more prone to fail in an earthquake that the old bridge it replaced.

“The 2013 East Bay is notable for how little it actually changed things in the Bay Area,” Mikesell writes.

The bridge was such a fiasco that prominent officials skipped its opening in 2013. It was left to the lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, to handle the ceremonial chain-cutting. In brief remarks, he expressed hope that the bridge would inspire “a generation to dream big dreams and do big things.”

Now that Newsom is becoming governor—and promising big things—perhaps he can turn the bridge into a perverse inspiration by following its essential lessons. Any big project must be truly transformational, providing a service or a connection that truly changes people’s lives. Paradoxically, the execution of such transformations must be intensely practical and risk-averse, emphasizing function over form.

In other words, when you are pursuing a transformational project, achieving the transformation itself must be the sole focus.

How might such lessons be applied? If Newsom wants to build a single-payer health care system, it shouldn’t be the gold-plated model that progressive groups have been advocating for, but rather something simple, cheap and sturdy, covering everyone. He’ll need to resist efforts to make his promised new systems for taxation, homebuilding, and early childhood highly complex with loads of new formulas; the simplest systems are more likely to be durably transformational.

After reaching Yerba Buena Island, I walked around and enjoyed views of Newsom’s city of San Francisco for a few minutes. Tired and sweaty, I called for a Lyft to take me back to Oakland. But no driver would come. So I trudged all the way back, on sore feet, repeating my earlier mistake.

The post Can a Troubled Bridge Show California How to Avoid Big Errors? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If California is as serious about public transit as its urban leaders claim, why isn’t there a commuter rail service running over the Golden Gate Bridge?

There’s no good reason why our state’s iconic span must devote all six of its lanes to cars. For more than 50 years, engineering studies have shown that the bridge could accommodate trains.

And now would be the perfect time to establish a rail line across the Golden Gate. On the level of symbol, train service would send a powerful message to the whole state and to the world that California offers more than just car culture. And, practically, the dense and traffic-plagued Bay Area would benefit immensely from a rail connection between San Francisco and the North Bay counties of Marin and Sonoma.

As our major regions plot new transit investments, there is no more glaring hole in California public transportation than the one across the Golden Gate Bridge.

North of the bridge, Sonoma and Marin are about to open the first phase, from Santa Rosa to San Rafael, of their new SMART light rail service (Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit). SMART, which also includes a bicycle-pedestrian pathway, will eventually serve a 70-mile corridor from Cloverdale to Larkspur, just 10 miles up the 101 Freeway from the Golden Gate.

South of the bridge, San Francisco is spending billions to construct the Transbay Transit Center, which has been billed as the Grand Central Station of the West. It is supposed to be the northern terminus of high-speed rail someday, and it should accommodate Caltrain, the commuter rail service that extends down the peninsula and all the way to Gilroy, the garlic capital at the bottom of Santa Clara County.

Toll booths at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, May 2002. Photo by Paul Sakuma/Associated Press.

But there is no plan for a train—be it via expanded BART service or a cross-bridge extension of SMART or some new service—to connect the new SMART train with the new giant train station. Which is sort of shocking for a place full of do-gooders who love to lecture the rest of us on the need to live sustainably and go boldly into the future.

So a question for the Bay Area: What in the name of progressive enlightenment are you waiting for?

The idea of a train on the Golden Gate Bridge is not a new one. To the contrary, such train service was envisioned as part of the original plan for the BART system. Michael C. Healy, in his excellent new book BART: The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, recalls that Marin County leaders in the early 1960s badly wanted to be part of BART. They were seeking to restore train service lost with the dismantling of the railroad that once took riders from Sausalito to Eureka, with a famous stop in Santa Rosa (the train plays a role in Alfred Hitchcock’s early classic, Shadow of a Doubt).

But in the fall of 1961, the governing authority of the Golden Gate Bridge balked at allowing trains, claiming that they would put too much stress on support cables. BART’s own engineering studies found that the bridge was plenty strong enough, but the bridge authority, out of what critics have maintained was fear of losing toll dollars, wouldn’t budge and produced its own competing studies. In the end, BART dropped Marin from its plans, to the frustration of several county officials. It would take more than half a century to bring rail transit to the county—in the form of the new SMART.

The idea of a Golden Gate train didn’t die. In 1990, renewed talk of BART to Marin led to a study that found the bridge could handle trains. But during the big California recession at that time, the multibillion-dollar cost of taking BART to the North Bay ended the conversation.

In this history, there’s a lesson even more dramatic than the Golden Gate: There are huge costs when California skimps on infrastructure, and fails to build the big and essential connections between our communities. A bridge train to the North Bay would have been easier and cheaper in the 1970s than now, and so for 40 years North Bay commuters have paid a rapidly rising price—in traffic, bridge tolls, time, and the extortionate cost of parking in San Francisco.

Just how much cheaper and easier would high-speed rail have been to build 30 years ago, when the idea was first suggested for California? There is real wisdom in the phrase that Healy attributes to Bill Stokes, the founding father of BART: “Build it now. It will never be cheaper.”

That’s why a train link over the Golden Gate Bridge would make sense today. Yes, such a plan would be attacked—this is the Bay Area and this is California, after all. Preservationists and aesthetes would say an iconic American landmark is being sullied by any change, as if adding rail to a roadway were the same as painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

Marin’s anti-growth zealots would oppose it, arguing that the train would encourage new development in their idylls. Engineers would wonder about the cost and difficulty of tunneling through the Marin Headlands to get to the bridge. And pointy-headed accounting types would cite the cost and point out that most commuters in the North Bay are going to jobs that are in the North Bay, along the very busy 101 Freeway corridor, and that with the rise of telecommuting, the number of commuters may shrink in the future.

And those who follow BART closely will argue that that system is at a difficult crossroads, and needs to focus on maintenance and other pressing projects, like a second tube under the Bay between Oakland and San Francisco.

To all such objections there is one answer: Why is the Bay Area thinking so narrowly and with so little vision for the future? As an Angeleno, I can’t resist pointing out to Bay Area friends that in the realm of public transit, we in Southern California are surpassing you, having passed sales tax increases to fund a transformational 50-year plan for a regional system that makes yours look like a disjointed joke. Are you really going to just sit there and let yourself be embarrassed for the next century by L.A.?

If done well, imagine how powerful a Golden Gate Bridge-traversing train would be. It could stop at Union Square, connecting with BART, on its way to the new Transbay Transit Center. It would draw commuters. It would draw tourists. It would draw rail fans. And it would make the planet’s greatest bridge even greater.

Such a train could be the inspirational showpiece of what the Bay Area badly needs: a new regional plan for transit that connects all nine of its counties. And when you pair the utility of such a train with its status as a powerful symbol of California’s commitment to a connected and sustainable future, you know what, Bay Area? You’ve come to this bridge. It’s time to cross it.

The post Golden Gate Bridge Train Service? It’s Time to Get on Board appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On Saturday, E3 will be cordoned off by layers of security before undergoing a controlled demolition. The monumental caisson (engineering parlance for an underwater concrete sarcophagus) will be encircled by a curtain of bubbles to dampen the destructive shockwave caused by 600 demolition charges. This will happen in the midst of extreme scrutiny from environmental watchdogs, while convoys of boats measure water quality, marine mammal movements, and underwater acoustics. When the six-second explosion is complete, the last great reminder of the “greatest engineering feat of modern times” will disappear under 50 feet of Bay brine.

We mourn the loss of great works of architecture like Penn Station and decry the wanton destruction by Islamic fundamentalists of Palmyra or the Buddhas of Bamiyan; we know that something beautiful and great has been lost forever. When a bridge is taken down, it rarely makes the papers. Bridges, as some engineers will tell you, have one function: To get you from Point A to Point B, safely and efficiently. Form following function, sometimes without the form.

We should take a minute to mourn the passing of “Old East.” It was a true workingman’s bridge: “It’s rivets, it’s steel. It’s dirty at times. It’s a means to an end, to get by. You’re working and you’ve got to cross this thing, but it’s still looking out for you. It’s taking care of you. … It’s a blue-collar bridge,” said Richard Mooradian, a structural steel welder on the former eastern span for Caltrans, who was interviewed by UC Berkeley historians for the Bay Bridge Oral History Project. In fact, it is—was—comprised of 650,000 pounds of rivets. The 22 million pounds of steel was, at the time, the largest steel order ever placed in the U.S. By the mid-20th century, the rivets and I-beams of the cantilevered Old East were supplanted by high-tension bolts and pre-stressed concrete.

Rivets on Old East

In 2013, just prior to the dismantling of the cantilever structure above Pier E3, I made a night-time journey to photograph the beauty and art in the old eastern span. I crawled up into the girders to photograph a bridge that is far from a quotidian means to an end, but something more transcendent: poetry, a spiritual relic, even somewhat alive. I’ve been exploring the deepest, tallest, and largest manmade structures in the U.S.—from Cold War missile sites, to the highest cranes in San Francisco, to manufacturing facilities for everything from paper to concrete for the past fifteen years. In the rivets of Old East I saw an inherent beauty; combined with the gusset plates, girders, and I-beams, now long gone, they were a vocabulary that many engineers could read like a verse of Shakespeare or passage of E.M. Forster.

And if we imagine engineers as poets, then cantilever bridges like the Eastern Span are the iambic pentameter of civil engineering—common and underappreciated, meant to have a lifespan in the centuries and withstand the heaviest weight loads and winds in the world. Though often denigrated for their erector-set appearance, cantilever spans have survived intact since the 1880s for a reason: None have collapsed due to natural causes.

In February of 1968, a military plane crashed into the cantilever section of the Bay Bridge’s eastern span in heavy fog, leaving only a few blackened and bent pieces of I-beam. Even the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake did not really provoke a “partial bridge collapse.” A deck at Pier E9 succumbed to the 7.1 temblor at an awkward connection between two truss decks—but the cantilever structure itself held strong.

Until its demolition, the Bay Bridge was the world’s most diverse, concentrated collection of bridge types. And it held the title as longest bridge in the world for decades. When the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed steelworker Al Zampa about his favorite bridge in 1986, he replied, “Bay Bridge. Jesus, look at her. Two suspensions end-to-end, six different kinds of bridges, 8 ¼ miles long, deepest piers in the world. We lost 24 men; we dangled up there like monkeys driving shot iron. No net. You fell, that was it. They thought we was all crazy.”

When it was complete, Old East had a spirit and life of its own, sometimes expanding and contracting up to 12 inches due to differences in temperature and load. “Have you ever been on the bridge?” Mooradian rhetorically asked the Berkeley historian. “It has a heartbeat. They all have a heartbeat. They’re all different. They all bounce and move in a different way, and that’s the heartbeat.”

East Bay truss span

The Bay Bridge was also the site of an improbably spiritual awakening that became part of the area’s intellectual history. In 1974, Gary Warne was climbing on the bridge when he had a revelation. “Once I was on the bridge I was greeted by moonlight on still waters and the skyline of the city diminutively reduced to scale on a plywood board, ready for display,” he wrote in his seminal essay “Carnival Cosmology.” “The bridge was obviously a jungle gym made to climb rather than drive over: The cars just using it for the in-between times. … It was then that I was first struck with the feeling that we were here to play, if nothing else, here to play with the world and other people.” That distinctly local exaltation of conscious play became the basis for Warne’s Suicide Club, which was an inspiration for the Cacophony Society and Burning Man, even though Warne himself died in 1983.

In fact, the bridge has been seen in spiritual terms since its opening on November 12, 1936. It was hoped that the bridge would not just join two great cities, East and West, but also unify “the hearts and goodwill of men.” The opening events lasted five full days, and they included 200 planes flying in perfect mass formation; fireworks releasing parachutes with American flags; President Roosevelt activating a switch to signal the procession; the release of a thousand pigeons. The governor of California cut a golden chain with an acetylene torch.

When the final scraps of steel exit the Bay, there will remain just a few pylons of the old causeway at a soon-to-be-created Gateway Park in Oakland. Parts of it—about 1 percent—will be reincarnated as park benches, lamp posts, bus shelters, gazebos, and other public art projects under an agreement with arts organizations in Oakland.

No doubt someday I’ll have feelings for the new bridge, but now it lacks the imprint of time and the memories and ownership that can only come through the rituals of working, reflecting, remembering, and playing. Mooradian knew how he would respond when asked about the new Eastern Span, “I don’t pay attention to it. I just don’t. It’s not mine. I have no thing with it yet.”

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