BAY BRIDGE (KRON) -- Commuters should plan to get to work and back home again without using the Bay Bridge until sometime tomorrow at the earliest and several days from now at the latest.

Under intense questioning from KRON 4's Darya Folsom, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney finally agreed to speculate about best and worst case scenarios.

"We don't have a time frame, that is the official response," Ney told Darya and Mark Danon on the KRON 4 Morning News.  "If everything went perfectly what could it be?  With today being a complete closure, probably some time within tomorrow.  That's not an official response.  That's just taking a crack at it.  The worst case would be based on how the testing goes for the seal.  If something happens during the testing and we need to get more pieces here, to get them ordered and actually out here on the site.  That's what could take time."

Ney says the winds are another factor slowing the repair effort.  Structural engineers who examined the location where two high-strength rods broke during the Tuesday afternoon commute say they have come up with a plan for fixing the bridge.

"Overall it's a four rod system," Ney said.  "Two rods actually fell off.  We're replacing that.  What we're looking at for the modification is some strapping that will keep them from vibrating. 

The bridge has been closed since Tuesday evening when two high-strength rods and a crossbar failed sending debris down onto rush hour traffic.  The failure happened in the same place where crews had to repair a crack in the bridge over the Labor Day weekend. 

Ney says unlike Labor Day, they didn't need to fly in new materials.  The saddles that had to be fabricated and shipped over Labor Day remain in place.  Ney says there were only three pieces that failed, two tie rods and the crossbar they were connected to.

Engineers are defending their work then saying they don't believe the repairs were done too quickly.

"We have some of the best design engineers in the world working on the Bay Bridge," Ney added.  "They did an assessment yesterday and they incorporated that into the new design.  We don't know exactly what the whole story was there.  The wind was probably a factor but I haven't heard yet what their findings are."

Ney says no one is assessing blame for Tuesday's failure of the rods.  In response to an e-mail from a KRON 4 viewer suggesting the Labor Day work was a rush job, Ney said, "everything that was done that weekend followed the processes that are needed and to finish the construction.  We believe that we did everything that needed to be done to put the bridge back into public service safely."

In response to another viewer who expressed safety concerns, Ney added, "the main reason why we are building a new bridge is because there are strong concerns about how this old bridge would hold up in an earthquake.  We continue to monitor the bridge and look for issues like this."

Ney says crews have taken a look at the repaired section everyday since the Labor Day work.  Inspectors have climbed the bridge every weekend except one and haven't found any signs of distress, Ney said.

The loss of the bridge for the Wednesday morning commute led to huge traffic jams around the region.  The Richmond-San Rafael bridge saw some of the worst congestion while people riding BART say they faced standing-room only trains.  The transit agency added additional cars to its scheduled train service but did not add extra trains to the timetables.

Stay tuned to KRON 4 and KRON4.com for the latest on the closure of the Bay Bridge.

(Copyright 2009, KRON 4, All rights reserved.)