Bay Bridge closed indefinitely; transit agencies scramble to deal with Wednesday's commute

Bay Area commuters and local transit agencies were struggling Tuesday night to figure out how to deal with the emergency closure of Bay Bridge after a crossbar and rods from emergency Labor Day weekend repair work came loose and struck three vehicles.

Caltrans closed the bridge in both directions at around 7 p.m., and the San Francisco Chronicle and KTVU said officials could not estimate when the bridge would re-open. The pieces crashed across the westbound lanes of the bridge's eastern span, east of Yerba Buena Island, at about 5:30 p.m. Amazingly, only one person sustained minor injuries.

Inspecting the bridge and beginning the repairs was complicated by high winds Tuesday night.

Now, transit officials are trying to figure out how to deal with commute traffic across the region's busiest bridge.

BART would bring in extra operators to run trains, and the Golden Gate Ferry will have an extra high-speed ferry available. Plans for putting more ferries in operation was in the works.

Bay Bridge to remain closed until early Wednesday: How will you cope?

That is, if you need to take the Bay Bridge tomorrow.

The announcement that work that led to the bridge's closure over Labor Day weekend won't be completed until 5 a.m. Wednesday, not tomorrow morning as scheduled, leaves thousands of drivers to find alternate ways to get into San Francisco. It could also create possible gridlock on other Bay Area bridges and roads.

I have to say I'm lucky. I live and work in Walnut Creek. So does my husband. We actually defied the advice of authorities and went to enjoy a getaway over Labor Day weekend in kthe Big City. Amazingly, we encountered little traffic coming or going via the San Mateo, Golden Gate, and Richmond-San Rafael bridges.

But then, the Bay Area had received plenty of advance notice of the bridge's Labor Day weekend closure. Caltrans needed to shut down the bridge for a few days so that it could finish work on a 300-foot section of the bridge's eastern span. The closure had been announced weeks, months in advance. So, people likely stayed away from the city this past weekend or found alternative ways to get there.

But everyone expected that things would be back to normal first thing tomorrow morning.

Now that's not going to happen. Work on the span hit a snag over the weekend. As KTVU reports labor on the replacement portion will be completed as scheduled, but essential work on a cracked eyebeam will force Caltrans to keep the span closed until 5 a.m. Wednesday.

KTVU says the cracked eyebar was spotted during an inspection of the bridge Saturday, and construction crews scrambled this weekend to complete designs for the repair work and gather all the materials needed to complete the project. The crack was described by engineers as being about two inches thick and halfway through the eyebeam.