And much as that statement is true, we at the newspaper tried to take an admittedly crude stab at the cost of that aggravation. Our estimate: $7.5 million. This was based on an assumption that motorists who cross the Bay Bridge were delayed an hour a day in their commuting. Read how we made the estimate.

Rough as the estimate is for the value of time lost, the estimate reinforces the finding that the biggest hit from the recent six-day closure was on motorists, even though bridge operators took a hit of some $2 million in lost toll revenues.

The bridge closure had some upsides for some .  Some San Francisco residents appreciated less traffic in their neighborhoods with fewer cars entering the city.

BART had a huge surge in ridership, even though it was not enough to prevent the train system from reporting a 3.5 percent reduction in passengers for the entire month of October as compared to the same month in 2008.  BART officials hope some of those new passengers will stick with BART, but it remains unclear if the system can increase ridership after the bridge closure. We will have to check for November ridership figures to get an idea. 

All in all, though, if the public asks who suffered most from the bridge closure, the answere seems clear: the public.

Some say the six-day closure underscores the importance of finishing retrofits on Bay Area bridges to minimize risk of those bridges being knocked out of service by major earthquakes. We have about four years left before the new east span of the Bay Bridge opens, and seismic retrofits on the Antioch and Dumbarton bridges are now being planned.

Share you thoughts below.

Did the closure change your travel plans? Did the closure try your patience? Was it understandable Caltrans took so long to fix a Labor Day repair that failed Tuesday? Do you feel comfortable traveling on the bridge after the repairs are finished?

Let us know below, and if you leave your name and city of residence, we may use excerpts of comments in a news story.

Caltrans said this morning it doesn’t know when the fix can be fixed, but officials expect it to be “days at the worst.”

In the mean time, the Bay Area’s busiest bridge remains empty as we await word on a reopening time and cope with a traffic mess around the region.

If this sounds familiar to you, it should. When the eyebar crack was discovered over Labor Day weekend during a planned closure, Caltrans they didn’t know how long it would take to assemble the metal brace and reopen the bridge. The crack was discovered on a Saturday and the bridge reopened shortly before 7 a.m. on Tuesday - a couple hours later than initially planned but nearly a day prior to the Wednesday morning prediction that Caltrans had last given before reopening.

Bottom line: the region waited anxiously with uncertain timing.    

“Hopefully, we’re not talking about anything longer than days,” Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney told a television reporter this morning.

The parts for the fix are already at the construction site, but high winds could slow repairs when crews have to do work more than 100 feet above the westbounhd bridge deck, he said. 

When the brace was custom designed and installed to divert stress from the cracked eyebar to other eyebars on the bridge, Caltrans noted that this was the first time such a brace had been used to repair a cracked bridge eyebar. But similiar bracking techniques had been used in other construction applications, officials said.

Motorists are asking: If the first fix failed and came crashing down on the bridge, how will the second fix work better?

Tune in for answers at contracostatimes.com.  

Members of the Bay Area Toll Authority are wrestling with how to revamp tolls to do two new things: collecting tolls from car pools during rush hour periods on all seven bridges, and structuring Bay Bridge tolls so drivers pay more during peak periods, and less during in off-peak times.

The affected toll bridges are all in the region except the Golden Gate.

The proposal increase would be would increase from $4 to $5 per car except on the Bay Bridge, where the proposal gets more complicated because of the plan to use congestion pricing to encourage more people to avoid the bridge during the rush hour.

Here’s the details on the three hearings:

- 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4 at Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, Lawrence D. Dahms Auditorium, (across from the Lake Merritt BART Station) 101 Eighth St., Oakland

- 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17 at San Mateo City Hall City Council Chambers, 330 West 20th Ave., San Mateo

- 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3 at Concord Senior Center, Wisteria Room (in John F. Baldwin Park) 2727 Parkside Circle, Concord.

The main reason to raise bridge tolls is the $750 million needed to do seismic retrofits on the Dumbarton and Antioch Bridges, Toll Authority administrators say.

Click on BATA report about toll increase to view the agency’s case for higher tolls   

Written comments will be accepted until Dec. 21 at BATA Public Information Office, 101 Eighth Street, Oakland, CA, 94607-4700; or the comments can be sent via e-mail to tolls@mtc.ca.gov.

The seven bridges proposed for the increase are: Bay, Richmond-San Rafael, Carquinez, Benicia-Martinez, Antioch, San Mateo and Dumbarton.

Proposed options to make those major changes in July were unveiled Monday by the Bay Area Toll Authority, which plans to hold hearings in November. I’m betting both changes are going to come under fire from some angry drivers.  Members of the Toll Authority’s oversight committee made it pretty clear Monday that they broadly support the changes even if the officials want to study and modify some details of the changes. Check out a discussion on by clicking here on the BATA staff report.

Critics are likely to condemn the proposals as heavy-handed social engineering. Let’s take up car pools, first. Some car pool users will say goverment will be shooting itself in the foot by abolishing the free ride for car pools because – after all - squeezing more people into fewer cars reduces congestion and pollution.

In reply, Toll Authority staffers say don’t know of anywhere else in the nation where car pools get a completely free ride on toll bridges. New York and New Jersey give discounts, but not free rides to car pools.

Steve Heminger, the Toll Authority executive director, says he believes the biggest incentive to travel by car pool across the Bay Bridge is the time savings from being able to zip through the toll gates in the car pool lanes.

Heminger also contends that car pools should start paying some rush hour toll because money from a toll increase will go mostly toward $750 million in seismic retrofits planned on the Antioch and Dumbarton bridges, the last two toll bridges in the region to be upgraded for earthquake protection. Car pool users benefit from safety improvements aimed at keeping them alive and keeping their bridges standing, he says.

The proposal for higher fares during rush hour periods on the Bay Bridge also is going to be a hot button issue, too. Some will argue that charging a $6 toll in rush hour and $4 at other times is government forcing people when to travel, or penalizing people whose jobs require them to be at work early in the morning.

Toll Authority members say congestion pricing is the most effective way to steer people to change driving times or switch to public transit, reducing freeway congestion and global warming gases. Getting 15 or 20 percent of the Bay Bridge morning commuters to shift their commute times could make a huge difference in smoothing traffic flows, Toll Authority administrators say.

Also, a peak time surcharge on tolls could spur some employers to let workers start their day earlier or later, officials said. 

The public will get several chances to sound off on toll increase proposals, starting with the next Toll Authority oversight committee meeting 9:30 a.m. Nov. 4 at the Metrocenter in Oakland.

Share you thoughts below on what the authority should do about tolls. 

Now we can see how the new East Span of the Bay Bridge is expected to perform in a big earthquake. Caltrans has posted a computer animated video on its Web site - baybridgeinfo.org – depicting how a major earthquake will affect the new East Span, which is scheduled for completion in 2013.

 The new span will replace the original span, which was closed for a month after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.

The two-minute video is fascinating. You see a bridge loaded with cars undulating in big waves. You see the cable supporting the suspension span moving about.

 The video is real as you can get in predicting how the bridge will perform in a major earthquake.

“We are not creating a horror movie,” Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney told reporters yesterday during a briefing.

 The video was based on scientists’ best estimate of how the bridge will respond to the most violent earthquake shaking expected to hit the bridge in a 1,500-year period.

Scientists say the new East Span will bend but not fail because of a design that makes use of metal fuses in key locations.  It will sustain some minor damage but not enough to keep it closed for more than a short time – maybe one or two days – as crews repair some deck damage, Caltrans officials predict.

And that’s what we the public are getting for the $6.3 billion new East Span.

It’s the best show in town this Labor Day weekend, but the replacement of a 300-foot-long section of the Bay Bridge above Yerba Buena Island is very hard to see in person unless you’re a contractor, transportation dignitary, or working member of the media.

Radio station KCBS did a segment this morning on how the City Kayak business at Pier 40 in San Francisco plans to take experienced kayakers on paddles close to Yerba Buena Island for a good view. (It will probably be posted later on their Bay Bridge closure page.) But a lengthy paddle like that on the Bay is not for a beginning kayaker.  It’s just not safe. Winds can become especially strong in the afternoon on San Francisco Bay.

My advice for a viewing spot: check out newspaper Web sites like ContraCostaTimes.com and InsideBayArea.com, or Caltrans’ Baybridgeinfo.org, for many impressive photos and video of the construction project.

Our photographer Karl Mondon has taken several excellent shots that remind us of the allure of giant bridges. Bay Area television stations are having a field day producing footage of workers toiling high up on the bridge with scenic San Francisco Bay and ships in the background.

Tell us about your advance plans and then tell us how it actually turns out over the long weekend. With our common dependence on bridges in the Bay Area, it’s a big deal – practically and psychologically - when our busiest bridge has a 300-foot-long  gap sliced open and a giant filling rolled in to replace it and create a new bridge detour.   

Many of us may hunker down and stay local without crossing a bridge or without crossing from the west to east sides of the Bay. Then again, you may need to get across the Bay for work Friday, or for events like the UC Berkeley home football opener Saturday or the Scottish Games in Pleasanton Saturday and Sunday – both events that draw tens of thousands of people from far and wide. (Remember BART as an option.)

As for me, I will doing some work shifts from Caltrans temporary media village on Yerba Buena Island where reporters and photographers can the work above. Looks like the Road Queen and I both will need to catch a ride to the island from a special water taxi service set up for contractors, government officials, and media to get from Oakland to the island. Caltans has advised us: Bring a blanket because it’s likely to get cold out there at night.

Let us know how it goes.  

Go to to the Caltrans Web site - baybridgeinfo.org - for tips on getting tweets about progress on the construction project triggering the need to close the bridge for four days.

We all know the bridge will close 8 p.m. Thursday. The big question is: Will it reopen by 5 a.m Tuesday as planned? Will it reopen earlier, as is possible? Or will it reopen later, an unlikely but possible outcome that would cause traffic chaos on freeways after the long holiday ends.  

Tweet on.

For those who want to check Web sites to get updates on the bridge project, visit baybridgeinfo.org and the old reliable 511.org. They also wil post announcements about the bridge reopening 

Those entering the bridge from Interstate 780 also have a second merging lane to avoid traffic backup.

The new features, finished over the weekend, were in place for the the commute today as Caltrans wraps up a $43.5 renovation of the old Benicia Bridge.

The structure was converted to southbound only motor vehicle traffic in August 2007 when the state opened the new $1.2 billion bridge with five lanes for northbound traffic.

Let us know below what it’s like to drive the renovated bridge. Under the old configuration before the bridge renovation was done, that was some tight squeeze traveling from I-780 to enter the southbound lanes across the bridge. 

Read our blog this month for more information about the pedestrian and biking path across the renovated bridge. The path is scheduled for an Aug. 29 ribbon cutting. Times reporter Lisa White filed this July 23 story on the plan for that path and some hurdles to extend the trail from its south end at Mococo Road to Marina Vista, the gateway to downtown Martinez.