It's another Festivus miracle! The San Francisco Chronicle has published an article pointing out that private industry can achieve superior performance at lower cost, compared to public agencies. In this case, the Chron compares France's dramatic Millau bridge, the world's highest span, one built entirely by a private company, with the eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which is currently being built by the hapless California Department of Transportation. Needless to say, the CalTrans project is roughly a decade behind schedule and at least $3 billion over budget, while the French bridge was finished ahead of schedule, under budget, and at a fraction of the cost.

The article mentions a $5 billion cost estimate for the Bay Bridge, but I have heard the figure $8 billion bandied about, and don't doubt it, given CalTrans's demonstrated incompetence. In fact, the rebuilding a few years ago of the traffic maze at the foot of the eastern end of the Bay Bridge was done so incompetently that, after it opened traffic was worse than before, and the rebuilt portion had to be rebuilt. Again. This kind of incompetence verges on the criminal. CalTrans is skilled at one thing: enforcing affirmative action hiring and promotion quotas. Everything else seems to take a back seat. I have attended meetings at which CalTRans affirmative action officers have harrangued contractors to employ The Right People and hire The Right Firms. It is not pretty.

For the Bay Bridge, it was obvious from the first that CalTrans chose the most expensive and risky technology, an asymmetrical single tower suspension span, when a cable—stayed bridge (the type used in France, and everywhere else in the world, these days) was the obvious best choice. If you look at the pictures of the Millau Bridge, the beauty and economy of materials of the cable stayed technology is obvious. Boston and Tampa Bay, to mention two important American cities, have built beautiful "signature bridges" using this superior technology.

Undoubtedly, Bay Area motorists, who only a couple of years ago paid $1 to cross the Bay Bridge, will be paying $5 or more, to finance the incompetence of CalTrans and its engineering boondoggles.

Thomas Lifson  12 23 04