SALINAS – Caltrans’ work at one of its roadway projects on Highway 1 continues to make progress and evolve after giving visitors a path to Big Sur through the Rocky Creek slip-out repair site that started this week, but excessive winds are a concern and hampering some of the repair work.
On Monday, Caltrans opened its twice-daily convoys, previously only available to locals and essential workers, to also include all members of the traveling public. But travelers must be aware that after the last convoy, they will need to have overnight reservations in the Big Sur area. Travelers to Big Sur should also know that three landslides are still under repair further south resulting in the ongoing closure of Highway 1 starting at Dolan Point, so there is no exit to the south.
At Wednesday’s Monterey County news briefing, Big Sur Chamber of Commerce President Kirk Gafill said that businesses are welcoming the changes to the convoys to include the traveling public.
“I think the key issue is messaging, and we appreciate the consistency both with Caltrans, (California Highway Patrol) and all of the marketing partners – See Monterey, Visit California – to really make it clear that we’re open but in a very different way, and the critical importance of arriving early for these convoys and when you come in at night, having a room or a campsite reservation,” said Gafill.
Big Sur businesses are seeing modest numbers of travelers so far.
“We’re only into the third day, so it will take a little time to filter out,” said Gafill. “Most properties don’t expect to see anything more than 50% occupancy at the highest level until the northbound lane is reopen” to unrestricted traffic.
Gafill said that businesses are using “best-guess modeling” to figure this out and how to adapt.
“It’s been a real collaborative effort which has really been helpful,” he said. “I think we’ll just keep making adjustments as we go but it’s an important step forward and it’s one that is allowing more employees to go back to work, so that is really critical.”
California Highway Patrol spokesperson Jessica Madueno said that there have been increases in the number of vehicles each day since Monday with about 575 to 600 traveling through the Rocky Creek slip-out repair site.
At the Rocky Creek slip-out which occurred nearly five weeks ago, crews have been working day and night focusing their efforts on stabilizing the edge of the roadway in the southbound lane. Using a crane to suspend workers in a basket up and over the roadway so perform reinforcing efforts consisting of creating a web of metal dowels, secured with rock bolts and packed with shotcrete.
But in the last few days, excessive winds have hampered work from the suspended basket and at times curtailed efforts from that vantage point.
“This week, due to high winds in the area, crews have been unable to drill those stabilizing horizontal drills into the rock slope and that work has been interrupted since Monday morning,” said Kevin Drabinski. “To date we’ve been able to install a total of 46 of 75 horizontal rock dowels. We expect, however, that that work will continue to be suspended through Friday of this week due to forecasted high winds.”
Zeke Dellamas, Caltrans emergency manager, said crews are out at the Rocky Creek slip-out each day to put up the crane and assess the conditions as there is a safety concern with the wind speeds and gusts.
“Crews are doing everything they can to push the envelope on that wind speed,” said Dellamas
Workers are also proceeding with the permanent restoration that entails a large structural repair in the future.
“In order to do that, one of the components is what we call a subsurface investigation. That’s where we also drill vertically into the soil and rock present to determine what the engineering characteristics of that soil is, so the bridge supports will be based on that information,” said Dellamas. “If you can make lemonade out of lemons of these high winds, that’s most definitely that we’re able to get some of that work done.”
Caltrans is continuing working on installing a temporary, stationary, mounted signal with electrical power and a backup system.
Once Caltrans has reached its goal of stabilizing the roadway by May 27, a temporary signalization system will be employed to open Highway 1 to unrestricted traffic under alternating one-way traffic control, but only if its repair schedule is not impacted by excessive winds, rain events or any changes in the construction site conditions.
Currently, the twice-daily convoys that include access to visitors with reservations in Big Sur along with locals and essential workers, will run from 7 – 8 a.m. and 5 – 6 p.m., each day. Highway 1 will continue to be closed at Rocky Creek the remainder of the day so crews can continue the repair work and stay on schedule to reopen the roadway by Memorial Day.
Gafill said the Big Sur Chamber wants to support Caltrans keeping the project on track.
“That is absolutely the most important thing,” he said, “getting the northbound lane open as soon as possible and right now it’s really about the winds.”