The New Bridge (but not in Paris)
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Louis la Vache couldn't resist the allusion to
Le Pont-Neuf, "the new bridge" in Paris, which was completed in 1610 during the reign of
Henri IV, who had ordered its construction. (
Henri IV was assassinated that same year by a knife-wielding assailant on
rue de la Ferronnerie while the king's carriage was stuck in a Paris traffic jam. - Yes, Paris had traffic jams, even in 1610!) This bridge, 398 years later, is still called "the new bridge."
You ask, "OK, so what's the 'new bridge' you are talking about now? Isn't that the
cantilever span on the eastern half of the
Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge in the picture?"
Well, yes, and in front of it in the left half of the photo, is its still-under-construction replacement. Both the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937. In the 1989 earthquake, a section of the eastern portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed. It was decided that a new earthquake-resistant bridge should replace the 1937 structure. This decision should have been much easier than it was. The new bridge was fiercely opposed by many "special interest groups," many of them Berkeley-style "progressives," whose real agenda seems to be to "progress" us back to the stone age. The upshot of all this political wrangling is the bridge will cost far more than it would have had these "special interest groups" not blocked its construction for so long. (End of editorial). So here we are, almost 20 years after the 1989 earthquake and
le Pont-Neuf is under construction.
