Subject: Engineering

• Carquinez Bridge Shares Design of Minneapolis' I-35, Collapse Unlikely, Local Expert Says

  August 2, 2007

• Hayward Fault Ready to Rock the East Bay, Nerds Warn Today at Moscone

  December 10, 2007

• "You Go Down to Moscone Convention Facilities. It's Compostable." And Other Gavin Newsom Environmental Insights from the State of the City Address

  Does Gavin Newsom turn into Stalin when the moon is full? By Benjamin Wachs (This is State of the Citysode III: The Environment. Click here for Part II: Education, and Part 1: Health Care) 00:00 - Gavin begins philosophically. "I like to say that the world's consumption is the sum of all local consumption." Well, he's blown my mind already. 00:35 - "SF Forward" is a five year plan to curb our carbon and consumption. You know, given how inevitable comparisons were between Gavin an

  December 4, 2008

• S.F. gets off the crapper

  February 22, 1995

• Public Power Grab

  Why some "progressives" are putting energy into a bad idea.

  July 16, 2008

• Developments in Shaky Town

  Have developers killed the possibility of higher seismic standards for new high-rises?

  December 26, 2007

• Quiet! We’re On the Air

  November 7, 2007

• Letters to the Editor

  July 12, 2006

• Hard to Be Really Green

  Let's scrap the city's weak, pale-green environmental standards and actually take the total environment into account

  July 5, 2006

• A Bridge Too Costly

  The city's way of contracting out public works construction is broken — so much so that companies are not bidding on important municipal projects and that could cost us billions

  May 31, 2006

• Bridge Out

  A look at the comically delayed Fourth Street drawbridge project, and how the city's Byzantine contracting system costs millions

  June 22, 2005

• Best Welding Supplies

  May 11, 2005

• A Bridge Too Weak?

  A UC Berkeley professor believes the unique new Bay Bridge design is fatally flawed

  March 17, 2004

• War Torn

  Despite their hatred of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqis living in the U.S. oppose Bush's war

  February 5, 2003

• The Call of Afghanistan

  Young Afghan-American professionals pledge to return to their homeland to rebuild a war-ravaged nation

  November 21, 2001

• Dirty Pool

  August 8, 2001

• Letters to the Editor

  August 1, 2001

• Gray Skies

  If Gov. Davis has his way, California soon will have dozens of new power plants -- a lot of them in the wrong places, some of them unnecessary, and very, very few of them based on renewable energy

  July 4, 2001

• Running on Empty

  Detroit automakers have spent millions attempting to unplug California's effort to put electric cars on the road. And so far, Detroit's succeeding.

  June 27, 2001

• Contract Killings

  How the state's contracts with crucial electric power providers actually encourage them to gouge us

  May 30, 2001

• Delusions of Power

  April 4, 2001

• Dim Bulbs

  Greedy out-of-state profiteers make easy targets, but the real villains of California's energy debacle are the ones under the state capitol dome.

  March 7, 2001

• Delete the Sea Walls

  January 24, 2001

• San Francisco International Airpork

  How the SFO construction program went $1 billion over budget. Yes, billion. With a B.

  March 22, 2000

• Small Wonders

  Local scientists are shrinking chips and wires to atomic scale, revolutionizing the electronics industry. But most of the nanotechnological advances you've read about are outsized hype.

  December 8, 1999

• Fecal Matters

  When it comes to sewers, San Francisco just can't get its shit together

  September 23, 1998

• Between a Rock and a ... Rock

  Environmental testing in the Presidio may be a Sisyphean task

  September 24, 1997

• A Couple of Clowns

  August 13, 1997

• No Smoking: City Attorney Announces Settlement to Shut Mirant Potrero Power Plant 'Irrevocably' By 2010

  Joe EskenaziCity Attorney Dennis Herrera delivers the big news, backed by (from left) PUC head Ed Harrington, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, and former Board of Supes President Aaron Peskin​The answer has been revealed to the "mystery settlement" announced yesterday by City Attorney Dennis Herrera. And as soon as we saw Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington in the City Hall elevator, we guessed it -- it's Mirant! Herrera this morning signed off on a settl

  August 13, 2009

• We're Putting Our Money on 'Jumping the Box' as Cause of Massive Bayview Warehouse Fire

  ​Firefighters expect to remain outside a series of smoldering Bayview warehouses throughout the morning, spraying water on a blaze reported yesterday. The instability of the burned-out structures has kept firefighters from entering -- so no one knows exactly how much marijuana might be underfoot. Pot, however, was discovered growing on the site -- which makes the journalistically necessary phrase "the cause of the fire is under investigation" into something of a loaded statement. Marijuana gro

  August 31, 2009

• Double Rock Projects Murder Victim Remembered as Loving Father, Inspirational Student

  Courtesy Dion WilsonMichael Bailey​It was a sad day at Southern University Monday as news rippled across campus that a man who, by any measure, should have been on the school's brochures, was instead dead in San Francisco. SF Weekly has written a bit on Michael Bailey, the 26-year-old electrical engineering student visiting from Baton Rouge, La. who was murdered in the early morning hours on Sunday; police claim a woman Bailey and his friends met at a SoMa nightclub conspired to get the men to

  October 6, 2009

• Bay Bridge Rupture Reminiscent of Carquinez Eyebar Failure in 1970s

  The 1927 Carquinez Bridge also had issues with eyebars -- and aging​The Bay Bridge isn't the first local aging span to have problems with torn and failing eyebars. Yet the low traffic load and easy alternate route available to the engineers who remedied the last situation aren't applicable when it comes to the Bay Bridge. Mark Ketchum, one of the Structural Engineering Association of Northern California's designated experts on bridge design and failure, immediately likened yesterday's rupture

  October 28, 2009

• State Not Ready to Shut Down Mirant Power Plant Just Yet

  ​City clean power activists and politicos were split in their reactions to the outcome of a state power regulatory body meeting today in Folsom, as San Francisco's plans to shutter the Mirant power plant "irrevocably" by 2010 took something of a hit. While Cal-ISO -- the state body that determines how much power generation municipalities require -- seemed amenable to shutting down the plant's Unit 3 smokestack when the highly touted transbay power cable comes online early next year, it was not

  October 29, 2009

• Bridge Expert: I'll Still Drive Bay Bridge -- But Break Is Baffling

  ​Whenever something goes wrong with a bridge here or elsewhere, one of the first people we call is Mark Ketchum -- one of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California's designated experts on bridges. So, for what it's worth, Ketchum said he will unhesitatingly drive his car across the jury-rigged Bay Bridge -- though he's a regular BART commuter now rejoicing he can get a seat once again. Still, when asked what questions he had about the alarming failure of the bridge's Labor Da

  November 3, 2009