Coronado Eagle, Volume 4, Number 7, 17 February 1993 — What Bridge Work? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

What Bridge Work?

by Danuta Soderman

If you’ve been frustrated crawling across the Coronado Bridge, backed up in a slow moving parking lot, squeezed by orange coneheads only to discover nobody is working behind those pontoons, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. In a purely unscientific personal survey during the past few weeks, I have noticed no more than four people at any one time standing in the resurfacing lane, scratching their heads. Once, three workers stood around a fourth who was squatting in the road, picking at the surface with a little putty knife. On a Tuesday afternoon, one truck sat empty and nobody was touching the road with so much as a toothpick. On a Wednesday morning one guy was sitting in the truck. On a Saturday, even the truck was gone. What gives? I thought this was a major resurfacing job. I expected to see a hoard of hard working people with sweat pouring off their brows, hammering and scraping and sealing and painting 24 hours a day, doing whatever they have to do to resurface the lanes and get the bridge back to normal as fast as possible. I didn t expect the putty knife treatment. I called the Coronado Transportation Management Association. “You see,” the information officer informed me, “we have safety concerns and weather concerns.” Uh-huh. “Sometimes we need more lane space to work and have to wait for the latter part of the week when the traffic isn’t so heavy.” Uh-huh.

“And then, of course, the paint needs a certain temperature and humidity to adhere properly. So,” he continued, “even though you don’t see anybody working doesn’t necessarily mean nobody’s working.” Uh-huh. I called the senior traffic engineer. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “Seems that for the past two weeks we’ve had problems getting the asphalt mix approved.” Hmmmmm. I called Greg Butler, the resident engineer, in charge of the overall operation. “The painting took longer than necessary because you need a special cleaning process to work around the bolt heads. Lots of overlap work was needed. And the contractor had to prove the asphalt could go on properly.” “Why wasn’t the asphalt approved before the bridge work was started? Why hold up traffic while some off-site testing was going on?” I asked. “Special machinery was being installed where the asphalt was being processed and calibrated. We hoped for simultaneous work projects. But the process took longer than expected and we’ve been delayed by two weeks.” A-ha! The asphalt had to be calibrated. Sort of made sense. This week workers will be removing the old asphalt on lane two. That means the work area will be surrounded by traffic coming and going. To insure the safety of the workers, motorists should drive with special care. But rest assured, Greg Butler says, that the work will be going full force from now on. All the bugs have been worked out and the other lanes should be a breeze. Expect the resurfacing project to be finished by the end of March. If it doesn’t rain, Uh-huh.