Chronicle Urban Design writer John King has an excellent history of the Bay Bridge eastern span saga, from the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 to present:

When state officials open construction bids on Wednesday to build the tower for the new eastern half of the Bay Bridge, the target date to finish work will be 2013 — 24 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake snapped the upper deck apart.

Instead of an earthquake-proof bridge ready for traffic in 2004 as first promised, what exists today is a half-finished project that stands as a symbol of the Bay Area’s political inability to come together as a region even when lives and livelihoods are at risk.

I was in Basic Training at Fort Jackson, SC when the quake hit, and didn’t even know about it until days later when I managed to catch a glimpse of a newspaper headline. This article gives a clear and unbiased history of the difficulties involved in negotiating, designing, and actually building the new span of the Bay Bridge.