Massive Deck Sections for Bay Bridge's Self-Anchored Suspension Span Arrive

The first of 28 immense deck sections for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s new Self-Anchored Suspension Span (SAS) arrived in the San Francisco Bay today after a trans-Pacific voyage. The SAS is the most iconic element of the bridge’s new East Span.

"We expected (the voyage) to take a month and it only took 22 days," said Caltrans Spokesman Bart Ney.

The eight deck sections, and several cross beams that will link the span’s east- and westbound decks, weigh nearly 6,800 tons. These first sections will be used to build the western end of the SAS, at Yerba Buena Island. Future shipments will include sections of the span’s single 525-foot-tall tower.

The sections set sail on a 738-foot-long ship (the Zhen Hua 17) from Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co., LTD (ZPMC) in Shanghai, China on Dec. 30, 2009. Massive fasteners welded to the ship held the enormous deck sections, which were stacked two deep and enveloped in tarps to protect them from the rough winter seas during the nearly three-week voyage.

The deck sections will be transferred to barges for transport out to the construction zone in the middle of the Bay. The Left Coast Lifter, a 400- by 100-foot shear-leg crane barge that arrived in the Bay Area in March 2009, will play a starring role in the transfer and erection process. The crane’s boom weighs 992 tons, and is 328 feet long, and can lift up to 1,873 tons; according to Caltrans, "watching the crane barge lift these first eight sections will be an amazing spectacle to behold." The crane barge already has been busy erecting the temporary steel supports for the SAS.

The deck sections will undergo a series of reviews to ensure that no damage occurred during the sea journey. Once these reviews are finished and final preparations for installation are complete, the barges will transport the sections to the work site. Erection of the deck sections is expected to begin in mid-February, and will mark a major milestone for the iconic span that will transform the Bay and bring another world-class bridge to the region.

This is the first of eight shipments of deck and tower sections from China in the coming months, with boats scheduled to arrive approximately every two months. Ney announced today that the public can now track progress on the construction via Google Earth; this marks the first time that Google will incorporate a project in progress into its global interactive map.