Caltrans says bridge is safe

A rally will go on as planned today despite the fact a local activist group incorrectly thought a bridge crossing State Route 92 was unsafe based on an old federal report.

The Mid-Peninsula American Dream Council, in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, wants Congress to put more money toward fixing the country’s ailing infrastructure and will rally at a bridge in San Mateo today at Alameda de las Pulgas to show how federal stimulus money can be used for job creation while making needed repairs to the nation’s aging roads and bridges.

The trouble is, the bridge the group will rally at today is not "structurally deficient” as it thought it was.

The bridge, in fact, is safe, according to Caltrans.

But the group will rally at the bridge today anyway, said Cilla Raughley, spokeswoman for the local Dream Council.

It is too late to change the rally’s location, she said.

The news the bridge is safe "makes it less than an ideal location” to hold the rally, Raughley told the Daily Journal yesterday.

But the nation’s infrastructure still needs to be fixed, that fact has not changed, Raughley said.

"It is still a real issue,” she said.

The bridge, built in 1963, received a structural rating of "4” for the deck, considered to be structurally deficient, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s 2010 National Bridge Inventory.

But Caltrans completed a project in January of this year that involved column retrofitting and treating the deck with methacrylate that restored the bridge to "good condition,” Caltrans spokeswoman Gidget Navarro wrote in an email to the Daily Journal.

"The October 2010 bridge inspection report indicates the bridge is no longer designated as structurally deficient,” Navarro wrote in the email.

The bridge at Alameda de las Pulgas where the rally is planned is listed as No. 350161 on the bridge inventory report, which stated it had not been inspected since 2008.

The bridge was last inspected Oct. 13, 2010, according to Caltrans.

The old report listed the deck’s structural rating as a "4,” superstructure rating of "7” and a substructure rating of "5.”

Any rating below "5” is considered to be structurally deficient. The superstructure supports the deck and the substructure connects the bridge to the ground.

The updated report shows the bridge now has a deck rating of "7,” superstructure rating of "7” and substructure rating of "6.” The bridge has a 84 percent rating, according to Caltrans.

"I think this bridge is a better example of how we are identifying bridge needs and putting people to work addressing them,” Navarro wrote in the email.

Raughley praised Caltrans for fixing the bridge but said the old report listed at least 74 bridges in San Mateo County that were deemed structurally deficient and more than 180 bridges in Santa Clara County that had the same rating.

Bill Silverfarb can be reached by email: silverfarb@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.