Construction on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge this weekend is on schedule and "going exceptionally well," California Department of Transportation spokesman Bart Ney said this morning.

The bridge closed Friday night at about 8:40 p.m. and is expected to reopen by 5 a.m. Tuesday as planned, Ney said.

Ney said construction crews today are working to remove a 350-foot, 650-ton section of the bridge to make room for a new section. In order to remove that part of the bridge, crews sliced the abolished area into 63 fractions called "beams," Ney said.

This morning crews had removed 52 of the 63 beams, which allows workers to begin the "roll-in" phase that entails bringing in the new pieces of the bridge. The roll-in phase is expected to be completed by about 10 p.m. tonight, Ney said.

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The new section of the westbound viaduct is part of a seismic retrofit that Caltrans has been performing on the bridge.

— Bay City News