In a success story of good ol’ American can-do, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge re-opened 11 hours ahead of schedule. It had been closed for the 3 day Labor Day weekend for refitting a major chunk at Yerba Buena Island, a 350 foot long, 6700 ton piece that is integral to the new east span, under construction now. This is the section most affected by the ’89 earthquake when a segment of the bridge collapsed.
Infrastructure specialist C.C. Myers Inc. is the same company that rebuilt the section of the MacArthur Maze [near Oakland] that collapsed earlier this year when an intense fuel tanker fire brought it crashing down. This in an amazing 18 days, from scratch, in one of the most traffic intense areas of the state. Also, they rebuilt a section of Santa Monica Freeway back in ’94 after the earthquake brought it down, [this in 66 days from an alloted 140] All these projects saving huge amounts of costs that gridlock of traffic causes in time lost.
This is one example of what good can happen when everyone works together. It’s nice to know that in a crunch, there are folks that step up and get things done. In a time when we have glacier-paced studies and impact reports or the even more stupid greenhouse gas emission lawsuits that jam up needed traffic relief projects, this is refreshing and gives one hope that an attitude can still exist of ingenuity that made America great. C.C. Myers was able to pull CalTrans, and several other contractors together to finish yet another difficult project quickly, safely, and efficiently.
The Santa Monica and MacArthur projects had incentives to finish early and penalties for being behind schedule. This project had no incentive but did have a penalty according to C.C. of "…What are they gonna charge me… $60,000 for every ten minutes or something like that? I can’t afford that, but anyhow…" if not open by 5 AM Tuesday morning.
CalTrans gets maligned a lot but can take pride in how the Labor Day closure of the bridge went smoothly for travelers using alternate routes and modes of transportation, and in it’s role in coordinating the construction and finding the contractors like C.C. Myers to make it happen.
C.C. says "We’ll get it open as fast as we can for the people of the Bay Area…I’m making up for what happened to ’em in ’89, that’s what I’m doing. I did it over at the Maze and I’ll do it here."
I’ve never met Mr. C.C. Myers, I don’t know his politics, nor should it matter, in recognizing that for these kinds of accomplishments, his focus on improving quality of life for people, he is a great American.
September 4th, 2007 at 12:00 am
If not Governor, how about Caltrans Director? If he can’t afford the pay cut how about contracting out all highway maintenance to C.C. Myers? It would get done quicker and cheaper.