Early Sunday morning, a gas tanker crashed into a guardrail on part of the East Bay's primary freeway maze, the ensuing fire of which caused the section of that overramp to melt and collapse.
For those unfamiliar with the geographic relationship between San Francisco and the East Bay, this is a big deal. Even AP's national site led with it (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HIGHWAY_COLLAPSE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-04-29-22-53-32), instead of the shooting in Kansas City (no offense, KS, but for the first notable time, things that bleed physically don't lead.) The eastbound sections of I-80 and I-580 in Oakland are indefinitely closed about a half mile from the Bay Bridge's toll plaza, and that means driving from San Francisco-- where most East Bay residents work-- to the East Bay (where lots of people live) will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the next few weeks (or months, according to some CalTrans spokespeople).
BART has provided more trains to handle imminent rush hour doom between sides of the bay, and in addition to BART monitoring closely how well those changes work, public transportation of all kinds in the entire Bay Area will be free tomorrow, April 30.
"KGO's Jenna Lane, reporting from the scene, says it looks like the collapsed section of freeway has folded over onto the roadway below," according to local ABC network affiliate, KGO news. That's my sister, by the way. Hi, Jenna!
Family aside, that's kind of a scary thought... it's as disastrous a thing to happen to one of our freeways since a section of the Bay Bridge itself collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and even though it's extraordinary that no one was hurt except the driver of the tanker, who suffered only second degree burns, it's still devastating for the hundreds of thousands of people who have to change their commutes and the business that people will lose as a result of those changes, either in short-staffing or losing customers.
The local economy will likely suffer-- even though BART will be running more frequently, I imagine a great deal of people would rather avoid traveling in the Bay Area at all for a while, at least until all the public transit kinks get worked out. And time is money.
Even though public transportation is not impossible to come by, it's certainly a wake-up call to the reality that the Bay Area isn't all that independent of cars after all, and that we should work harder to be prepared for catastrophic surprises.
That being said, BART's free tomorrow. Anyone wanna go joyriding?
UPDATE:
Also of notable concern is that many local cities-- Oakland and Berkeley, mostly-- are complaining about the increased street traffic having negative environmental and health impacts on residents. There are an estimated 5,000 more cars per hour on the streets of Oakland and Berkeley now that a section of the 580 freeway is out of commission, which means more traffic and pollution, and less patience on the roads. Local residents say it's impossible to walk across streets or turn left off of main streets into driveways because the commuters don't want to stop, and that the average speed on the streets has increased (when it isn't backed up). Oakland mayor Ron Dellums worries that the elderly and asthmatic will be adversely affected by increased pollution from those cars, which is especially important because in West Oakland, where most of the increased traffic occurs, there are significantly large populations of the elderly and asthmatic.
Glad to hear relief is only 50 days away, or else Berkeley and Oakland might have to (gasp!) repair all the potholes on their roads.
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Gah, it's gonna be one helluva problem for my family. My parents commute daily to and from SF, and they have retail store, double whammy. Stupid Mayor... He shouldn't dissuade people from going to SF, he should encourage people to come there and help continue to revitalize the economy. Like you said, free joyriding on BART.
Well, I'm sure CalTrans will get everything moving pretty quickly, but it makes me wonder how long it will really take, since they're STILL rebuilding the Bay Bridge after it was deemed seismically unsafe because of, uh, the 1989 earthquake. You know, the one that collapsed a section of the bridge. 18 years ago.
I'm not terribly worried about the economy, actually, because I think the mayors of all the affected cities will work hard to encourage public transportation, and doing a good job of that will encourage new, more permanent ridership that perhaps a lot of carowners hadn't considered because they just "heard that it was awful." If they're forced to use BART or the bus systems, and their commute isn't that much longer or unbearable under the circumstances, it could do some good for the public transit agencies.
I do worry about that driver, though. Can you imagine, being asked why you left a job with the company that assigned him to drive that job?
"uh, I kind of sped around a slight curve with 8,600 gallons of gasoline late at night, and escaped the cab just before the whole freeway was engulfed in flames and the steel girders melted and collapsed the freeway onto another freeway. At least 280,000 people per day use those freeways, and the state has declared the area a disaster area for emergency construction funding. But I'm a good driver, honest."
Maybe he should try gardening?
I hate hearing about accidents occuring. A person never knows when they occur, but it like they happen right out the blue -- that is why they are called accidents, I guess. I prefer walking and not driving a vehicle because I love to exercise, and I do not want to get killed in a vehicle accident. I hope things will be ok in California. Hopefully, less situations like that do not occur. I sure hope so, at least.
It's kind of hard to walk everywhere in the Bay Area. Easier, I suppose, than some other places, but it's just as bad as LA in terms of needing a car (whether you rent or own) to get to far-reaching parts of SF or Berkeley. BART does a good job of serving commuters who work in the financial district, but the residential areas are almost all served by SF Muni (bus/train system). Muni's much better than AC Transit in the East Bay, but hopefully that will improve soon.
I can understand your concern about accidents, but it's rare that a gas tanker flips and explodes on one of the most-traveled sections of the Bay Area's freeways, so I'm not especially worried about that. Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt-- talk about good timing to have it happen at 4AM on a Sunday.
The good news is, CalTrans now reports that their timetable puts the 580 section back in working order in 50 days (the 880 section on which the tanker actually exploded will be reopened in about 10 days). Of course, it's still going to cost in the tens of millions of dollars. It's already cost at least 3 million just to demolish the ruined sections.
Traffic still sucks, too.
Its funny I was driving home from Reno the Sunday that bridge thing happened. It was hours later almost noon the next day and I almost went on I-80 to drive through SF but decided in the interest of time to drive back to LA. I wonder if it would have been a horrible delay. O well. It just goes to show that we are really very vulnerable in some areas. If that collapse were a terrorist attack think of the repurcussions. It'd be so easy to blow up major overpasses into major cities like that too and it could totally paralyze a city and cause incredible financial fallout. Sickening.
"Its all very well in practice but it will never work in theory."
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/daimler
i think that people are so dependant on their own vehicles when public transporation is cheaper because we're used to being self reliant and independant. We'd rather be responsible for being late, than blaming it on a late bus.