Bay Bridge Public Lecture Series Debuts

Come meet the engineers transforming the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge into a world-class, pioneering engineering icon. On Thursday, September 27, 2012, the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee will host the first panel of the Joseph P. Nicolleti Lecture Series showcasing the Bay Bridge. Join several Caltrans engineers as they explain the complexities of load transfer for the marquee element of the new East Span of the Bay Bridge — the daring and dramatic Self-Anchored Suspension Span, or SAS. This time-and labor-intensive operation is transferring the weight of the SAS’ steel decks from the false work to the single main cable. The experts will also address other construction updates and quality assurance for the East Span project. The free event will be from 5-8 p.m. in the Bay Theater at the Aquarium of the Bay, located at Pier 39 in San Francisco. The event is open admission; tickets/reservations are not required.

The lecture series is named for a Bay Area dean of seismic engineering, Joseph P. Nicoletti, who recently stepped down from several earthquake advisory panels after more than 25 years of public service and more than 40 years in the private sector as a seismic engineer and executive. Among Joe’s many public service appointments, he served on the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Seismic Advisory Board, an elite panel consisting of eight external engineering and scientific experts in the field of earthquake engineering, starting at its inception in 1990, as well as on the equally elite Toll Bridge Seismic Safety Peer Review Panel, which he chaired starting with its formation in the mid-1990s, also serving on — and for a time chairing — the Engineering Criteria Review Board of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Thanks to the expertise gained from his central role in the above three high-profile seismic panels, Joe was appointed a founding member and chair of the Engineering and Design Advisory Panel, a distinguished group of three dozen architects and engineers that was created by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Bay Bridge Design Task Force to look at aesthetic and technical issues surrounding the selection of a design for the new Bay Bridge East Span, and ensure that the span’s innovative engineering features will hold up under potential seismic forces at the Bay Bridge site.

MTC’s Bay Area Toll Authority is one of three partner agencies on the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee, the other two being Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission. For transit directions to the lecture, go to the transit planner at 511.org.