Opinion: Incompetence of Caltrans more serious than money
By Matthew Gomez
Staff writer
A truck driver named Tahir Sheikh Fakhar, 56, plunged to his death Nov. 9, falling 200 feet after traveling around the S-curve installed by the California Department of Transportation over Labor Day weekend.
The crash occurred less than two weeks after three cars were struck by 5,000 pounds of falling steel after an eyebar cracked and fell onto traffic on Oct. 27.
Caltrans, who oversaw both these projects and is currently building the new $6.1 billion Bay Bridge, is a danger to those who depend on the bridge.
The S-curve has already caused 43 accidents, or nearly five per week, in the two months it’s been open. The California Highway Patrol claims Fakhar’s death was not the result of a design flaw in the S-curve. Basing its investigation in part on eye witness accounts from other drivers, the CHP blamed the crash on the truck’s speed — reportedly 10 miles per hour over the limit — and the possibility that its cargo of Asian pears had shifted. But the turn shouldn’t be so unforgiving. It caused the death of Fakhar, who fell onto Yerba Buena Island after going over the three-foot guard wall.
Caltrans plans to put reflective strips along the guard wall and install a radar before the turn to inform drivers of their speed, but this cannot be a game of chase for Caltrans. They can’t keep creating messes due to lack of planning and then expect to fix everything with little safety precautions which should have been implemented in the first place.
The rusted and cracked eyebar, first noticed while Caltrans was installing the S-curve, had been there for a while. The crack was repaired after the S-curve’s installation, but it was not fully stress-tested in windy conditions in an attempt to re-open the bridge as soon as possible. Caltrans engineers said the wind caused metal rods, meant to secure the eyebar, to rub together and come crashing down.
Over the six days it took Caltrans to repair the attempted repair of the crack, the bridge lost about $2 million in tolls and cost Caltrans between $1.5 million to $2 million to repair, according to an article in the Contra Costa Times. This lost money is the direct result of incompetence on Caltrans’ part.
I understand the need to re-open the bridge as fast as possible to ease traffic on BART and the Golden Gate Bridge, but forgetting to take into account the wind in a city like San Francisco is inexcusable.
During the last closing to repair the crack, BART broke two single-day ridership records. On Oct. 28, the first day of closure, 437,200 people rode BART, breaking the previous record by 30,000. On the following day, the record was broken again, with 442,000 people riding BART.
As I rode the train to school those days, it was easy to tell who was new to BART and how much the bridge’s closure had affected their day. Trains were packed, regardless of BART’s attempts to ease the cramping by extending train length and adding special stops to Montgomery station.
Another closing is in the works sometime during the next four to five months to allow Caltrans to work on the crack. Plans range from trying to protect the rods from vibrating to replacing the eyebar altogether. Since the eyebars connect like a chain, the latter solution may require additional eyebar replacement. It isn’t fair to the people of San Francisco and the Bay Area for one of their main arteries into and out of the city to be closed for Caltrans to keep repairing their mistakes.
I’m going to stick to BART. It gets me where I need to be, and I rarely have to worry about my commute. I’d rather worry about a BART strike than a 5,000-pound shower of steel. But there are those who depend on the Bay Bridge, which means they depend on Caltrans. For their sake, I hope Caltrans takes future repairs a little more seriously.