Caltrans Out Millions in Aborted Projects

The California Department of Transportation has lost nearly $17 million on structural designs and steel it bought but never used to fix elevated freeways damaged by the October, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake, officials have acknowledged.

Most of the loss came when Caltrans paid $15.5 million to six Bay Area consulting firms for the drafting of plans to strengthen freeway columns by encasing them in steel. The engineering technique was subsequently rejected as inadequate by a peer review panel of experts.

In addition, the transportation department has quietly disposed of 20.7 million pounds of steel purchased for the ill-fated project by selling it at a loss of $1.28 million. Most of it was never transported to California from the mill near Salt Lake City where it was bought and stored.

A Caltrans spokesman blamed the loss on a calculated risk it took in rushing ahead with plans to restore traffic on the elevated San Francisco freeways without submitting them to a normal review by a panel of outside experts. Officials said they felt compelled to respond quickly after the earthquake, which caused extensive damage to Bay Area transportation facilities.

“We gambled and we lost,” said Jim Drago, Caltrans spokesman.

But Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), a frequent critic of Caltrans, characterized the cumulative $16.78-million loss as a “major-league screw-up” that cost the taxpayers the equivalent of a highway interchange.

“Somewhere, somebody could be building an intersection for what these guys wasted on drawings that never will be used,” said Katz, who chairs the Assembly Transportation Committee.

None of the elevated freeways Caltrans wanted to repair in San Francisco have been reopened since the temblor, which registered magnitude 7.1. The collapse of more than a mile of the elevated Nimitz Freeway in Oakland, killing 42 people crushed in their vehicles, focused close attention on the condition of freeway support beams.

In San Francisco, nearly three miles of double-decked freeways--including the 1.25-mile Embarcadero Freeway--are being torn down. Two other viaducts in the city will remain closed until late 1993, Drago said.

Days after the earthquake, Caltrans signed contracts ranging from $801,000 to $5.1 million with six Bay Area engineering firms to draft retrofit plans for sections of these weakened thoroughfares, said Drago. Firms hired by the department included Bechtel, CH2M Hill, TY Lin International and Tudor International, he said.

Under the guidance of Caltrans, the consulting engineers designed a program that relied on the use of extensive steel “jackets” wrapped around weakened freeway columns--a technique that engineers had used for single-column, single-story freeways in Southern California.

Confident of the design, the state paid a Pleasant Grove, Utah, mill $3.9 million for 20.7 million pounds of steel, Drago said. Of that, 14.7 million pounds were rolled into sheets, most of which were kept in outside storage areas at the mill; the remaining 6 million pounds were “fabricated” into odd shapes for use on the freeway columns, he said.

But plans for the steel hit a roadblock after Caltrans convened a 10-member peer review panel in April to check the designs and offer suggested changes. “We were confident at the time . . . that those changes could be incorporated into the ongoing contracts,” said Drago.

Instead, the panel of engineers and college professors told Caltrans that by mid-1990 it would have to start over. The panel determined that the steel jackets would not be able to withstand lengthwise movement of the roadway in the event of a strong quake. Last week, two UC San Diego scientists unveiled a new plan to use reinforced concrete as an “edge beam” along the freeways instead.

Members of the peer review panel agreed that, in hindsight, Caltrans made a mistake by not asking their advice first. But they added that the agency was under intense political and community pressure to reopen freeways to commuter traffic.

“I can say, sure, they made a bum decision, but they thought they were proceeding along the right path . . . ,” said Joseph Nicoletti, a structural engineer in San Francisco who co-chaired the panel. “They would have been criticized for not moving fast enough.”

Drago said the panel’s recommendation meant Caltrans had to scrap all of its $15.5-million worth of retrofitting plans. “We haven’t used any of them,” he said.

He also said the state sold off 14.7 million pounds of its steel this summer to Gary Steel of Long Beach at 14.2 cents and 16 cents a pound--considerably less than the 19 cents a pound Caltrans paid. The state lost $674,865 on the sale of that steel, more than 13 million pounds of which was never picked up from the Utah mill.

“The steel was outside and by the time we would have gotten to some of the stuff, it would have deteriorated,” said Drago. “We’re paying rent on the space so the decision was made to sell it and recoup as much money as we could.”

Caltrans lost another $600,000 Tuesday when it auctioned off the remaining 6 million pounds of fabricated steel for 10 cents a pound less than what it paid, said Drago. The batch was already cut up into shapes and bored with holes so it could be attached to the freeway columns.

Drago said Caltrans has tried in vain to use the metal pieces for other purposes, such as casings for roadway culverts.

“These fabricated pieces, there’s not a heck of a lot you can do with them,” he said.