Bridges

Two proposed bridges in Alaska that became symbols of the excesses of old-fashioned "pork barrel" politics would get the ax -- sort of -- under a deal emerging on a major transportation spending bill. One of the spans is the infamous $223-million "Bridge to Nowhere," proposed to link Ketchikan to an island where there is an airport and about 50 people. The other is a $229-million span near Alaska that was to be dubbed Don Young Way after the powerful Alaska Republican who chairs the House Transportation Committee.

Two months after an oil spill blackened San Francisco Bay, authorities Friday were investigating what caused another vessel to hit one of the region's signature bridges. This time, a 300-foot barge loaded with oil struck a piling that supports the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, but no oil spilled. The accident occurred in dense fog and darkness about 6 p.m. Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. The crews of two tugboats that were towing the oil barge Cascade passed sobriety tests.

Thousands of drivers pass over them every day as they cross the Los Angeles River -- 11 iconic bridges that link downtown to the neighborhoods and freeways lying east. Unless traffic is bumper to bumper, it's hard to appreciate their ornate splendor, the graceful Greek columns on the Olympic Boulevard Bridge or the Classical towers along the span at 4th Street.

The stalwart people of this tiny, crescent-shaped island have fought off invasions from mainland Khartoum for more than 700 years. Early settlers of Tuti, nestled at the confluence of the White Nile and Blue Nile, relied on the rushing river to fend off hostile tribes. As Khartoum grew into Sudan's bustling capital, residents here clung to their cultural isolation, striving to maintain the feel of a sleepy farming village, even though their island is just a stone's throw from downtown.

Randal Kleiser, director of the film "Grease," descended Sunday into a dark tunnel underneath the Sixth Street Viaduct strewn with garbage and covered in graffiti. On the other end was a downtown section of the Los Angeles River he last visited 31 years ago to film the movie's climatic drag-racing scene. "This is very surreal," Kleiser said, stepping on shards of glass. "It was clean and sparkly when we were here." As he exited the tunnel, Kleiser was struck with a rush of nostalgia.

It's been three years since Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Deputy Ken Rushing watched 18-year-old Andrew Popp lean backward off the edge of Cold Spring Bridge and disappear into the fog-cloaked gorge below. The image pops into the veteran deputy's mind at odd moments, including when he was driving his children to Disneyland recently. "It got quiet in the car and I saw him again, right before he jumped," Rushing said. "He gave me a thousand-mile stare. He basically looked right through me.

A year after the collapse of Minneapolis' Interstate 35W bridge, which killed 13 people and injured more than 100, the drive to improve the safety of the nation's bridges has faded amid waning public interest to fund such projects in a souring economy. "The push to repair bridges and our country's infrastructure has become a victim of the bad economy," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat who, along with California GOP Gov.

Since the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and the Northridge quake in 1994, the state has been trying to seismically retrofitted bridges across California. Given the significant earthquake last week, I thought it would be a good time to provide an update. The state owns more than 12,000 bridges. The California Department of Transportation says that in the last 20 years it has retrofit 2,189 of the 2,194 bridges that needed updates, many of which are on freeways and other major corridors.

For 18 months, small chunks of concrete have been falling from the Metro Gold Line's elevated station in Chinatown and crashing onto the sidewalk several yards below. No one has been hit by the debris, but transit officials acknowledge the potential danger to pedestrians near the station. Black webbing has been hung under the Gold Line bridge from Union Station to Chinatown to catch falling rubble (it's also provided a nesting place for pigeons).

An elderly man sat on a chair in front of his house, lamenting the loss of yet another piece of his past. A short distance away, the skeletal remains of the Sarafiya Bridge dangled over the Tigris River. Focus on the steel-frame bridge, where a truck bomber killed at least 10 people early Thursday, was quickly diverted by the lunch-time attack at the heavily guarded parliament building. That's not unusual in Iraq, where brutal mornings often give way to uglier afternoons.