Bay Bridge Closure: A Big Catastrophe Leaves Commuters Stuck as Bay Bridge Closure Continues

The Bay Bridge closure is inconvenient. The Bay Bridge closure is horrible for commuters that use the Bay Bridge to get from work to home. While the Bay Bridge closure is currently indefinitely, CalTran is working to find a solution ASAP.

Would rushing to fix structural damage for the Bay Bridge closure be wise? After all, if everything isn't just so, we could have another tragic incident much like what happened on the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. Of course, if the Bay Bridge were to collapse, there would surely be more deaths, as the drop is much, much further.

In 2007, the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. There were several victims of the bridge collapse, and so far the courts in Minneapolis aren't accepting Bridge court cases until 2011.

Why did the Bay Bridge closure occur? The Bay Bridge closure occurred when a crossbar broke Tuesday at the height of the evening commute. The Bay Bridge failure occurred after the same piece of the bridge was repaired over the Labor Day holiday.

Yeah, right. They didn't fix a thing! Now, thousands of commuters are stuck trying to figure out how to get across the bay bridge. BART trains are packed, and traffic is at a standstill in many of the areas.

Now would be a great time to telecommute if you live in the Bay area. With the Bay Bridge closure, getting home can be rather treacherous.

CalTran expects that the Bay Bridge closure will be rectified in "days". Their main concern is worker safety. Although worker safety IS very important, they should also worry about getting the fix right this time so that no innocent commuter is killed or hurt while traveling across the Bay Bridge.

Mercury News reports that one commuter woke up at 5 a.m. to take a BART train. When she arrived at the station, the parking lot was already half-full.

I used to cross the Mississippi River each and every day. Luckily, there are 2 bridges in to Memphis from Arkansas, so if one were shut down the other one would be able to allow you in and out of the city. However, whenever there was an accident on one of the bridges, you could expect delays of up to 3 hours to cross the bridge. I can only imagine how the traffic situation is in the San Francisco Bay area today.

Hopefully the Bay Bridge closure will soon be rectified and commuters will once again be able to use the Bay Bridge.

Sources:

Mercury News: http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13658982

Minnesota Public Radio: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/2007/bridge_collapse/