Q While driving over the Embarcadero Bridge in Oakland the other day, I saw a sign saying the bridge would soon be closed — for two years. Wow! Please explain.

Mary Lee

Oakland

A Here we go. The bridge will be closed from May 11 until May 2018. A new, seismically safer bridge will be constructed to span the Lake Merritt Channel where it joins the estuary. Embarcadero will be closed between Estuary Park and Fifth Avenue, and traffic will be detoured to the Seventh Street Bridge.

The new bridge will be 59 feet wide, compared with the current 37 feet, with 12-foot-wide lanes and 6-foot-wide bike lanes in each direction, a 5-foot-wide sidewalk on the north side and a 12-foot-wide path on the estuary side. Better street lighting and new restrooms are also included in the $23 million project, as well as a new traffic signal at Fifth Avenue.

Q My husband and I travel to Manteca on Interstate 580. I always see several lone drivers in the toll lanes with paper license plates zooming along without activating toll lights. I guess they don’t pay any toll.

Dorothy Rohrer

A State legislators need to get off their butts and fix this. There is a bill in the Legislature (Assembly Bill 516) that would require temporary license plates on new vehicles. It was introduced more than a year ago and is now on its third reading in the Senate. This is also a big problem on Bay Area bridges and toll lanes, where the state loses $15 million a year when drivers with paper plates blow through toll areas without paying.

Q I guess by this time someone has told you that during the planning and promotions for BART in the 1960s, official publications made it sound like all passengers would be seated.

John Stashik, Bob Chioino, Ronald LaPedis and more

A Only a few thousand have told me and, boy, did they send me on a long historical hunt. I tracked down an informational brochure called “This is Rapid Transit for the Bay Area” that was published before construction started. It did not promise a seat for every rider but did state that “passenger facilities will provide the utmost in comfort and convenience, including spacious seats and aisles, pleasing interior colors, and temperature controls.”

Q I went down El Camino Real on Monday and there were large green signs that said “101.” No arrow or anything else, just 101. That seemed a very good way to confuse out-of-towners and probably others. What gives?

Fran Lawrence

A This is an example of a Smart Corridor project that runs for 20 miles of El Camino from San Bruno to Menlo Park. It includes fiber optic communication lines, signs like what you saw and closed-circuit TVs, all of which enable cities and Caltrans to manage traffic on local streets.

On this day a horrible road death near Page Mill Road on Interstate 280 diverted cars to 101, where other problems caused an extensive slowdown. Drivers were advised to try El Camino and to return to 101 when traffic eased.

Follow Gary Richards at Twitter.com/mrroadshow, look for him at Facebook.com/mr.roadshow or contact him at mrroadshow@bayareanewsgroup.com or 408-920-5335.