I finally have something nice to say about the Land Park Interstate 5 bicycle bridge fiasco. The mess proves civil engineers are civilized people.
Even when faced with angry clients and legal threats and questions about their competencies, civil engineers working on the bridge never blew their cool.
At least not in public. And never in writing.
The unshakable professionalism shown by engineers involved with the bike bridge is remarkable. After all, these are times when a fourth glass of wine, a social media app and smart phone can wreck a career.
I’m sure some civil engineers responsible for the bridge had close calls, moments after that fourth glass when they thought about spewing several words in their defense about oven-dry concrete tests and rebar coring conformities.
But they resisted. They didn’t point fingers. They begged no alibis. When the going got tough, they kept their smartphones down.
And they did something better. They looked for solutions.
Even when the engineers knew they failed—the bridge was declared not durable enough before it opened and ordered torn down and replaced—they focused the engineering chatter on collaborative, professional goals.
The engineers’ civility became clear as I leafed through about 1,900 pages of correspondence from the city. Getting those pages was tough. Asking nicely got me nowhere. I finally filed a formal public records request for documents.
In contrast to the engineers, the city was neither professional nor civil when it came to coughing up public records.
After ignoring my bike-bridge public information request, the city produced several electronic shopping bags of emails, correspondence, public notices and photos.
The release was voluminous but sanitized, comprised of much useless information, cherry-picked to stop me from learning how a $12 million bicycle bridge across California’s premier freeway and Riverside Boulevard erected itself with nonconforming concrete and rebar.
I complained, but it was pointless.
The city said key documents must be withheld for possible litigation—even though state law prohibits local governments from hiding public documents unless the material is specifically prepared for legal action.
The stuff I wanted—contracts, concrete and rebar core tests, pour mixes, schedules and approvals—existed months before anyone knew the bridge was a bust. Months before anyone thought about lawsuits.
On the bright side, the 1,900 pages included many emails to and from civil engineers. The emails make it clear serious engineering talent planned and managed bike bridge construction.
Some of the engineers are city employees. Others are affiliated with private firms working for the city. Some work for the contractor who built the bridge. Others work for Caltrans, the state agency with authority over the project. At least a dozen engineers were involved.
Even when deciding the bridge didn’t meet durability standards and needed to come down, the civil engineers were civil. A Caltrans engineer captures the tone:
“I recommend that the concrete should remain rejected and that the contractor should prove the material won’t cause durability issues.”
With millions of dollars at stake, an engineer for the contractor fires back:
“Please see the attached letter regarding the quality issues on the Land Park underpass cantilever bike path.”
That’s as heated as things get. Unfortunately, I can’t quote the letter. The city won’t make it public.
This is the eighth column I’ve written about the I-5 bike bridge. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really not—not when $12 million in concrete gets cantilevered across the freeway and nobody will explain why it went wrong.
I’ve tried to determine how the city spent four years funding and designing a bridge to link the Del Rio and Sacramento River Parkway bike trails, how the bridge was constructed, found inadequate, and torn down.
I was tempted to say next time, when the city needs a bridge, it should hire better civil engineers.
Now I’m pretty sure engineers aren’t the problem. Concrete can fool the best of them.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
