Monday, March 15, 2004

Bridge work

I guess I never got over my Tonka truck phase, but it brings me pleasure and satisfaction to see construction projects with giant cranes and the earthmovers and the rigging going up… For example, I have been sorely distracted over the past several months to see the construction, across the street from my office building, of a new ramp and lane for the Transbay Terminal’s busses.  I don’t know how people concentrate when, with a turn of their heads, they can watch the face of the very earth being transformed.

That project, the new ramp and lane, is part of a huge process underway to reroute traffic around the TBT while it’s being entirely rebuilt, and to create a new offramp where the freeway ends in the middle of the city.  I got to see some other action items on that punchlist last night as I drove the elevated roadbed to the east bay – at several sites, new freeway piers were going up, new tie-ins were being prepared.  Derricks and cranes surrounded clusters of rebar that erupted like stands of metal saplings from half-built concrete pillars.  The impression was one of strength and courage, cleverness and confidence.  It was fun to see what had been built so far, to try to figure out what the final structure would look like.  It was entertaining. 

But the ride back later that night gave me a view of a far more audacious project.  The 80 (here in CA we preface freeway names and numbers with a definite article – “the” Hollywood freeway, “the” 405, “the” Bataan death-commute) hugs the east side of the bay down to Oakland, and then veers west over the Bay Bridge.  The BB has two distinct sections: a beautiful and famous suspension span from the City to the island, and an infamous gritty cantilever section from the island to Oakland - infamous, because it partly collapsed in a 1989 earthquake and has been deemed seismically unsound ever since.  I, for one, like it, with its homely utilitarianism, its thick-headed rivets by the thousand, its machine-age ethic – but we all knew it needed replacing.

Last night as I rose skyward on the inexorable grade of the east section, my attention was drawn to a series of very tall red cranes rising from the wine-dark waters lining the northerly side of the bridge on which I drove. I counted them as I passed them – one through nine.  At the foot of the first two I was barely able to glean that earthworks had been laid, new land jutted into the water.  A massive pier was being constructed, sheer concrete walls bristling with rebar on top like some jarhead’s brush-cut.  Though the bridge roadbed rises to about 250 feet above the water, the cranes far overtopped traffic.  I was filled with awe. 

This wasn’t just another cool construction project, a new elevated road or 50-story building joining a host of others in my crowded overbuilt city – it was an act that approached hubris, an ultimate expression of humankind’s transformative capacities.  A bridge – a huge one – rising up slowly but solidly from where today seals swim and barges float, labor that overcomes the limitations of earth, tide and human smallness.  My heart soared as the car climbed up the long incline. 

Of course, on the other side of the tunnel and island, the suspension section was as beautiful and visually entertaining as ever, the city’s spires arrayed to the right, the depths of the bay to the left, and graceful five hundred foot towers punctuating the roadway.  Then I made the light at my offramp, and every light thereafter till I got home, straight up 9th and down Hayes to Gough to Fell and over the hill and along the panhandle and into the park, stopping only at a few stop signs once I was almost back to my abode.  I tell you, when the system is working for you, it is a beautiful and powerful thing.  It’s like you’re tapping into something much bigger than yourself.  As I watch them building the new ramps and the roads and the piers and the bridge, I can feel them pumping energy into the system.  When they’re done and I finally blow through those finished projects at cruising speed with no taillights in my eyes, I’ll reap that energy.  With luck, I’ll be able to send it on along somewhere.

A guy in my neighborhood has a small pickup truck (think Chevy S10). He got the decals removed, painted it bright yellow, and has the Tonka logo printed on the side and back. I would have loved to see his kid’s expression when he saw that for the first time.

I’m totally stealing that idea.

You are the only person I have ever seen who can make road construction sound cool!

Well, you know what I like about road construction? Wolf whistles....

Dan probably gets wolf whistles too--he just decided to go with the architectural poetry route for this post.

First, thank you for being one of the few people in this world who says something inspiring and nice about road construction. As a civil engineer, I spend most of my life defending infrastructure improvements. I think I’ll print out this post just so I can hang it on my office wall and look at it lovingly.

Second, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only freak who gets jazzed looking at stuff like that. Patricia and I had a similar conversation about a massive project in the DC area, and now I get to add you to my list of like-minded people. Of course, lilsis says she never gets bored when I tell her about my projects… that’s three, non-engineering people who enjoy this stuff. Could I hope for more?

it’s one thing to get wolf-whistles, but another altogether to be chased for food by actual wolves.  The city’s contract with Lupine-Volpine Heavy Equipment and Construction is really starting to backfire. 

And they are planning on putting up the city’s highest office building across one block from my office, our windows point to the site. Could be a monstrosity, but it’ll be cool to watch…

I bet you have “Sim City 3000”

I was a big-time Tonka truck kid.  I loved moving the earth around more than anything.  I’ve often said that I would give up my desk job to become a crane operator if the pay were the same.