North and South Miles Apart on Bay Bridge Project
Call it a bridge too much.
The plan to replace the earthquake-damaged eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with a stunning but budget-busting design is drawing the ire of Southern California business leaders.
California can’t afford the luxury of building “aesthetically pleasing” bridges when cheaper, less elaborate basic structures can save money and move people and goods safely, said Fran Inman, senior vice president of Majestic Realty Co., one of the biggest developers in Los Angeles County.
“If money was not an object, we could have the frills,” she said on a cellphone while stuck in traffic on the 10 Freeway last week. “We need to get back to basics.”
The estimated cost of constructing a planned 1.9-mile, single-tower-suspension bridge from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island has quadrupled to $6.2 billion since 1998, increasing by $300 million in just the last eight months, according to the California Department of Transportation.
The argument over who should pay for the bridge is reminiscent of earlier north-versus-south battles such as the water wars of the early 1980s -- when Northern Californians successfully beat back a ballot initiative that would have built a new canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to move increased volumes of water to the thirsty south.
The regional squabbling over the Bay Bridge is “fueling more passion than Dodgers-Giants games,” quipped Rusty Hammer, executive director of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber wants no part of paying the estimated $500 million extra it will cost to give San Franciscans another “signature” bridge when they already have the Golden Gate. The half a million dollars would be better spent relieving Southern California commuter gridlock, filling potholes and repairing storm-damaged local roads, Southland business officials contend.
“If they want a Disney Hall design, they can pay for it,” said George Kieffer, a lawyer and former L.A. chamber chairman. “We can’t have it coming out of Southern California’s money.”
Kieffer, the personal attorney to First Lady Maria Shriver, was part of an L.A. chamber delegation that traveled to Sacramento last month to lobby key members of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s staff on the bridge issue.
The chamber has also been lobbying members of the Southern California legislative delegation, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), and has repeatedly highlighted its concerns about the bridge in the organization’s internal and external newsletters.
The chamber is backing a Schwarzenegger plan to save time and money by junking the suspension design in favor of a prosaic “skyway” that looks similar to a standard freeway overpass.
The governor is proposing that the state provide $300 million to demolish the old cantilever bridge, declared seismically unsafe after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The rest of the money needed to complete the new bridge would have to be raised from a combination of increased tolls, local bond sales and existing state and federal highway appropriations, the governor says.
Bay Area advocates, led by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), counter that there’s no strong evidence that Schwarzenegger’s alternative would be cheaper and that changing plans now could actually increase costs.
What’s more, Bay Area advocates say, it’s unfair to force Northern Californians to pay a disproportionate share of construction, because the bridge is a key component of the state and national highway system.
Perata and other Bay Area lawmakers have already agreed to a $1 hike in the Bay Bridge’s current $3 toll. However, they’re determined to stay with the suspension design and are pushing for a $7.7-billion general-obligation-bond sale. The bond would pay to complete the Bay Bridge and scores of other transportation projects around the state, including key improvements at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and along the 710 Freeway corridor.
The governor’s proposal “is asking us to pay for virtually the whole thing” just because the Bay Area has revenue-generating tollbooths, Perata said.
The L.A. chamber opposes Perata’s bond issue, which comes up for a first legislative committee hearing this week. It also opposes a bill by Nunez that would finance billions of dollars’ worth of delayed road construction projects, including at least part of the Bay Bridge, by raising the state sales tax and floating $10 billion in bonds. The measure also would eliminate the state sales tax on gasoline.
