East Span Update

Bay Area officials are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a cargo ship carrying the first tower sections for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s iconic Self-Anchored Suspension (SAS) Span. The shipment departed from Shanghai on June 18 aboard the Zhenhua 18, and is expected to arrive in mid-July.

The 525-foot SAS tower will help give the bridge its unique design, which calls for a single cable to anchor into one side of the span’s eastern end, drape over the tower, wrap around the west end, and go back over the tower to anchor back into the eastern end.

A ceremony on Chanxing Island in Shanghai with officials from Caltrans and Zhenhua Heavy Industry Company, which fabricated the SAS tower and deck sections, celebrated the departure of the tower pieces.

“This is a momentous day celebrating a monumental accomplishment. The shipment of the first tower segments of this stunning architectural and engineering marvel are now ready to depart the dock here at Changxing Island,” said Ken Terpstra, Caltrans project manager for the Bay Bridge Seismic Retrofit Projects. Firecrackers were lit to impart good luck to the tower and its voyage.

The SAS tower is actually comprised of four individual legs, each of which are made up of five vertical sections, or lifts. In total, the SAS tower contains 20 different pieces. This first installment, which is currently on its way to the San Francisco Bay, contains four pieces that are 155-feet-tall and weigh 1,190 tons each. They will make up the lower level of the tower, beneath the roadways.

After the tower sections arrive at Pier 7 in Oakland, they will be inspected to make sure no damage occurred during transportation. After this review, barges will transport the sections to the construction site where crews will place them onto the massive concrete foundation awaiting them in the Bay.

Meanwhile, the SAS road decks have been taking shape since February, with 12 deck sections already in place, and more scheduled to arrive from China in the coming weeks.

The East Span project is being overseen by the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee (TBPOC), made up of MTC’s Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA), Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission.