Monday, April 30, 2007
San Francisco is Screwed
Turn out the lights... the Party's over!
When I was growing up in Santa Cruz California we had the big Loma Prieta (World Series) Earthquake in 1989, which shut down the Bay Bridge for a while. Yes, the Embarcadero fwy was also destroyed, but the Bay Bridge is THE artery connecting Oakland and San Fran. The tanker fire and bridge collapse in SF on Sunday has once again caused the closure of the most important roadway leading to and from San Francisco.
Ignore the red circle... It was supposed to be on the East end of the Bridge, not the West. It's Monday, give me a break!
As you can see on the photo above, there's really only 3 ways across the bay. Two of them are North and South... way out of the way for 90% of the commuters. This means that SF is cut off from most of its employment workforce, which lives across the Bay.
What they'll most likely do to speed up the repair of the bridge is what the State did after the 1994 Northridge quake (which I was lucky enough to be in as well). The State will offer an extremely large amount of money to a couple of companies to fix the Bridges, and they'll also include a bonus package. $1M+ for each day the bridge is completed ahead of schedule. It's basically free money to the contractor, turning a 4 month gig into a 1 month gig with lots of profit. It's worth it to the City and State, since they'll be losing millions in productivity while the bridge is closed.
Give it a month and things should be back to normal. Until then, it's going to suck being a commuter in the SF Bay Area.
HA HA!
It's OK, Cindy feels your pain.
posted by El Capitan at 12:33 PM
1 Comments:
airforcewife said...
We were there in Loma Prieta, too! It was awesome to get two days off school and go home early the first day back because the principal mistook the smell of fertilizer for a broken gas pipe!:)
My question, though, is this: I thought Rosie said that fire could not melt steel? Is this another government conspiracy?