Thar She ... Lifts. Massive 'Left-Coast Lifter' Sighted By Bay Bridge Offramp.
The towering "Left-Coast Lifter" bides its time in Oakland prior to its deployment crafting the new Bay Bridge. Sorry this photo isn't exactly of Ansel Adams' caliber, but it's not easy to drive and shoot...
Earlier this month, the Bay Area media went gaga over the "Left-Coast Lifter," the massive platform-based crane brought in to, literally, do the heavy lifting for the Bay Bridge. SF Weekly made a couple of calls and, to our astonishment, we ended up on the line with Mike Flowers, the project director overseeing the whole bridge shebang (too many unheeded communiques to the Mayor's Office of Communications can lead one to forget that some people actually do answer their phones and return their calls).
Flowers explained to SF Weekly just what the massive crane -- built in Oregon and China and costing roughly $50 million -- was capable of doing. And, perhaps most intriguingly, he noted that, by next year, the Lifter's work will likely be over -- and the folks at American Bridge-Fluor Enterprises will have to ponder how to get a skyscraper-sized water crane off their hands.
In the meantime, you can catch the lifter in all its glory just before the EBMUD sewage treatment plant, right by I-80 Eastbound as you exit the section of the Bay Bridge it will help to replace. There is no shortage of cranes in that vicinity, but the Lifter stands out; its impressive size and gaudy red, white, and blue coloration make it the Super Dave Osborne of cranes. 
Courtesy American Bridge-Fluor Enterprises Seen here in a "proof-load" in China, the Lifter can handle 2,000-ton objects. Hopefully, it will soon be doing so here in the Bay Area
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