Bay Bridge Labor Day Opening Looks Unlikely

An early September opening date for the new Bay Bridge likely won't happen.

So much for a Labor Day Bay Bridge Party.

The much anticipated and hoped for Sept. 3 opening day for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge will all but certainly be delayed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Labor Day is not back on the table," a Caltrans spokesman told the newspaper.

The bridge's most-recent woes can be traced to the 32 high-strength steel rods -- fasteners that held tight a seismic-strengthening structure on the bridge -- snapped when they were tightened.

Those seismic safety devices are being retrofitted to be made useful again with temporary fixes as well as long-term solutions, the newspaper reported.

Reports from the Federal Highway Administration and the Caltrans seismic safety committee on the fixes' statuses are due in August -- which may not give enough time to give notice of the four-day Labor Day weekend closure of the bridge. And either way, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which oversees regional transit, is on summer break and won't return until after Labor Day.

That means a bridge closure for Labor Day can't be approved until after Labor Day. Or, "in other words, forget about it," the newspaper reported.

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