Highway 1 to reopen over summer after $11.5M repair.
Caltrans announces project to rebuild scenic roadway wrecked in heavy winter storm
A massive slide that sent a section of Highway 1 on the southern Big Sur coast into the ocean last month will be repaired and reopened “early this summer,” Caltrans announced Thursday.
Road crews will fill in a large canyon across the roadway with tens of thousands of cubic yards of dirt in a V-shape and construct a new road on top of the fill. The project will cost $11.5 million, state highway officials said. The emergency construction project will begin next week.
“Highway 1 is an iconic roadway that connects travelers with small businesses on the central coast, and we’re focused on restoring travel on this section by early summer,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin in a statement.
The scenic, two-lane roadway failed about 16 miles south of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park during a drenching atmospheric river storm that hit the Bay Area, Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur on Jan. 28. The Big Sur area, visited every year by millions of tourists, received the most rain — up to 15 inches in some remote areas of the Santa Lucia mountains — over two days. The rain caused a large section of steep hillsides that burned in the Dolan fire last August, and adjacent to the road at Rat Creek, to collapse, carving a huge gash in the roadway just north of the community of Lucia.
Summer officially begins June 20. But work on the repair project will depend, in part, on how much it rains in the next month or two.
“Early summer is meant to be somewhat open as we are in the middle of the rainy season on the Big Sur coast,” Caltrans spokesman Kevin Drabinski said. “We will know more as the construction progresses and be able in the upcoming weeks to zero in on a reopening date with more confidence.”
Highway engineers had studied several options, including a bridge, to repair the breathtaking gap in the roadway, photos of which drew worldwide attention. Crews plan now to replace the main drainage system at Rat Creek with an oversized main culvert, a secondary culvert and smaller overflow cul
verts. They say that will increase the capacity of the drainage system, which became plugged in the storm with boulders, mud and downed trees, and help it withstand future storms.
The contractor is Papich Construction of Arroyo Grande. Crews are planning to work seven days a week during daylight
hours.
During the repairs, about 5 miles of Highway 1 will be closed to all vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The northern turnaround is 2 miles north of Rat Creek at the Lime Creek Bridge at mile marker 32.1, and the southern closure is at Big Creek Vista Point at mile marker 27.3.
Businesses north of the closure on Highway 1 in Big Sur are unaffected and remain open. So are businesses south of the slide. The closure makes it impossible,
however, for motorists to drive from the Monterey area to Southern California entirely along Highway 1 until repairs are completed.
The winding, narrow road known as the Big Sur Coast Highway, which stretches 70 miles from the Carmel Highlands to Hearst Castle at San Simeon, is one of the most picturesque roads in the United States. It is a National Scenic Highway and a California Scenic Highway, with the road carved treacherously into towering mountain slopes, and perched on the edge of steep cliffs that plunge hundreds of feet to the Pacific Ocean below.
Since the road opened in 1937, it has been closed more than 60 times because of slides and other calamities. But because of its iconic nature and popularity, which draw tourists from around the world who support restaurants, hotels and stores to boost local economies, highway officials always rebuild it.