Plagued by delays and cost overruns, a $5.1 billion renovation of San Francisco's Bay Bridge has run into added problems as the state refuses to pay for more construction and talk of new debt floats in the air.
Earlier this week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state will not pay new costs because local officials opted for a more aesthetically pleasing, yet expensive, span.
"Local officials chose this design over the original plan and it has proven extremely expensive and has led to significant cost overruns," said spokesman Vince Sollitto.
"The governor does not believe the state should take from other desperately tight budgets around the state to give to the Bay Area to pay for these extra costs," he added.
The Bay Bridge, which spans the east side of the Bay Area and links downtown San Francisco to the Oakland area, collapsed during the 1989 earthquake, killing one motorist, and ever since officials have planned a new, stronger structure.
Construction on a new span from Oakland started two years ago, but only now are city planners and politicians coming to grips with costs that are at least $2 billion over budget and building that is running five years behind schedule.
There is budding support for taking extra toll money from a number of Bay Area bridges and using that money to support a $500 million bond to provide short-term financing relief.
The bond, however, would not cover the extra $1.5 billion in longer-term financing needs, said John Grubb, spokesman for the Bay Area Council, a supporter of the bond idea.
The group, a business-sponsored public policy advocacy group, said it was still unknown how the extra financing needs would be made up, although Grubb said it could come from a possible rise in toll fares at Bay Area bridges.
Located on a peninsula, San Francisco has relied on its bridges since the 1930s to connect it to the outside world.
The Bay Bridge, the lesser-known sister to the more grandiose Golden Gate Bridge, is the city's most vital thoroughfare and is travelled by some 280,000 cars daily.
The latest price on the renovation stands at $5.1 billion, according to the California Department of Transportation. State officials initially planned to finish it by 2006, but now it is not expected to be completed until 2011.
The state originally planned to spend about $1.4 billion to build a basic, but less elegant eastern span. But many Bay Area officials wanted a grander bridge design at a price tag of $2.6 billion with a suspension section of cables connected to a roughly 500-foot needle tower.
Increased costs for steel and cement, driven by shrinking supplies and firm demand in countries like China, have added another layer of costs not envisioned when plans were drawn up in the late 1990s.
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