Posts Tagged ‘caltrans’

Bridge to No Accountability Keeps Cracking Up


Friday November 27th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:07am PST   •   2 Comments

As we have noted many times, the new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge came in 10 years late and a whopping $5 billion over budget, but all that time and money could not guarantee safety for the public. In 2007, fissures some 10 feet long cut through a steel bar 20…
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More Taxpayer Money for Nothing


Friday October 16th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 9:01am PDT   •   0 Comments

As we recently noted, the California Department of Transportation employs 3,500 full-time engineers who do little more than sit at their desks. The state’s Legislative Analyst wants to cut these positions, but Caltrans executives cried foul. So did union boss Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government. Blanning told reporters the…
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Bay Bridge Keeps Right On Corroding


Wednesday June 10th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 2:35pm PDT   •   0 Comments

As we have repeatedly noted, the stylish new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was 10 years in the making, a whopping $5 billion over budget, and yet riddled with safety issues. We have done our best to keep up with the problems, but they keep on coming. As Jaxon Van Derbeken…
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Government Wings It on Waste


Wednesday November 19th, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 6:10am PST   •   0 Comments

At the end of our recent piece on the Great Crane Giveaway, we observed that “when it comes to big government and bureaucracy, things are always worse than they seem.” As it turns out, the crane giveaway wasn’t the end of it, as San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross point out….
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Will Criminal Investigation Make It Across the Bay Bridge?


Monday August 4th, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 9:04am PDT   •   5 Comments

The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has already rung up $5 billion in cost overruns. The span also came in 10 years late and could well pose a danger to the public. As we recently noted, UC Berkeley structural engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asi believes the structure is unsafe and declines…
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Pillage People Gear Up Government Greed


Friday November 22nd, 2013   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 8:00am PST   •   0 Comments

California deploys some of the highest income and sales taxes in the nation, but the Golden State’s pillage people are worried that they might not be high enough. They now want to more than double registration fees on motor vehicles, more accurately known as the car tax. The car tax is based on .65…
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Why “s— happens” with government


Wednesday May 22nd, 2013   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 9:16am PDT   •   6 Comments

“Look, s— happens.” That was California governor Jerry Brown, a former candidate for President of the United States, responding to reports of faulty bolts and rods on the new span of the Bay Bridge linking Oakland and San Francisco. The governor didn’t get into why, exactly, all that happened, but it’s worth a look….
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