Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used a welders torch today to cut open a chain
to the new Interstate Highway 80 San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge West Approach span,
scheduled to open this weekend ahead of schedule.
Photos by Jim Herd, SFCitizen.com, special to Fog City Journal

By Ashley Wright

April 11, 2008

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today attended an opening ceremony on the new Interstate Highway 80 San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge West Approach, celebrating the project’s success and its projected early completion, the governor’s office reported.

Schwarzenegger, along with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony and praised the project, which has been constructed while Bay Bridge traffic averaging 280,000 vehicles per day continues, according to the governor’s office.

“Today we are celebrating a milestone for one of the most crucial and challenging public works projects in California’s history,” the governor said.

“The mile-long West Approach that we will open this weekend requires mind-boggling construction and engineering feats. And I could not be prouder, as I said earlier, of our incredible workers who made this space of the bridge a reality, and not only a reality but a full seven months ahead of schedule,” Schwarzenegger said.

The West Approach is a 1-mile section of Interstate 80 between Fifth Street and the beginning of the bridge anchorage at Beale Street, according to California Department of Transportation spokesman Bart Ney.

The West Approach Project, scheduled for full completion in January 2009, is a seismic safety project that will result in the replacement of the section of Highway 80 as well as three onramps and three off-ramps.

Work to the West Approach has been conducted while keeping traffic moving regularly using temporary structures built to reroute drivers while permanent sections of the approach are demolished and rebuilt. Some rerouting onto city streets has also been conducted.

Portions of the project left for completion include additional widening of the highway and reopening the Harrison Street off-ramp, Ney said.

Traffic will be switched from the temporary eastbound Interstate 80 portion of the West Approach on Saturday to the newly built highway structure, Ney said. The opening of the new stretch of highway will allow motorists a straight drive onto the bridge.