After more than 20 years since the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake and spending more than $6.4 billion ($5.6 billion over budget), the California Department of Transportation Director was questioned this past Tuesday about the three dozen steel bolts that snapped on the new Bay Bridge.

In a nearly three-hour grilling before the state Senate Transportation Committee Tuesday afternoon about the embarrassing engineering failure and a possible delay in the bridge’s scheduled Sept. 3 opening, Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty pointed to a list of teams populated with federal, state and private engineers, and academic engineering institutions including the National Science Academy, who were involved in the decision more than a decade ago.

“We had a lot of expertise at the table,” Dougherty testified. ” … The decision (to use the type of high-strength steel bolts that broke) was reviewed by material testing engineers, corrosion experts, consultants and the engineers of record at T.Y. Lin and Moffatt Nichol. There was experience using these bolts. It wasn’t risky.”

The disclosure has shaken public confidence and cast doubt on the structural integrity of the world’s largest single self-anchored suspension bridge just months before the $6.4 billion span was scheduled to open.

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