In the ongoing conflict between the California Department of Transportation and the state capitol’s lead newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, over safety testing of the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the newspaper’s latest claim was that Caltrans has ignored several deficiency assessments of state transportation projects made by an internal engineering team.
This team, according to the Bee, has been examining safety test results from gamma-gamma testing since December, and the newspaper, through a Freedom of Information Act request, got hold of 1,000 files. According to the Bee, the panel found some “intentional modifications” of data causing “consequential” impact and involved not only the concrete foundation piles of the new self-anchored suspension tower on the Bay Bridge, but also foundation safety testing on several other Bay Area bridges, including the Benicia-Martinez Bridge and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.