Though there's been very little news you could categorize as good when it comes to the one-and-a-half-year-old eastern span of the Bay Bridge, today the Chron reports that a full inspection of the second of two failed steel rods helping anchor the suspension tower did not crack or fail due to waterborne corrosion, as previously feared. Caltrans has been conducting "mechanical pull tests" on the rods and last month found one that had fractured, though the exact cause of the fracture is still to be determined. Now in removing a second rod that failed the test, they found it had failed not because of a fracture but because a threaded section near the bottom, where it screwed into a nut securing it to the tower base, had been stripped, possibly during installation.
This is good news, you see, because it shows that there has not been so much corrosion, or other reason to doubt the integrity of all the steel rods in this section of the bridge where it's already been seen that saltwater has seeped into the wells where the rods sit. Caltrans still insists that "99 percent" of the 407 rods in question are just fine, and passed the pull test.
None of it amounts to great news, however, because there still will need to be a solution to the water seepage problem, and a long-term plan for protecting and testing the rods to prevent against future corrosion, and failure in the event of an earthquake.
Also, there is no replacing the rods at this point with the bridge fully installed they can not be removed and replaced intact because of their length and the lack of clearance.
