Features

Feds finance Bay Bridge

The Associated Press
Wednesday December 05, 2001

SAN FRANCISCO — A new $2.6 billion eastern span for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge received its last piece of financing Tuesday when the federal government provided $450 million, Gov. Gray Davis said. 

Construction of the new span, designed to withstand major earthquakes on the San Andreas and Hayward faults, will begin early next year. Caltrans plans to finish the modern single-tower suspension bridge in 2006. The current 65-year-old bridge will then be removed. 

Davis said the federal decision completes state funding for the bridge, which carries 280,000 vehicles a day. The $450 million is a loan to California from the U.S. Department of Transportation through its Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. 

The remaining $2.15 billion comes from state gasoline taxes, toll bridge fees and revenue bonds. The bridge’s eastern section was scheduled to be replaced after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.