Westbound I-80 closure begins Thursday night, reroutes to last through Tuesday

I-80 closure begins Thursday night, reroutes to last through Tuesday

Starting 9 p.m. Thursday until 5 a.m. Tuesday, Interstate 80 west will be completely closed for much needed repaving, making it a much smoother ride. The repair is expected to last as much as 40 years.

VALLEJO, Calif. - The final phase of closures for repaving on Interstate 80 near the Carquinez Bridge Complex, take place over this long holiday weekend. The massive project will save many future closures and deliver a much better experience to the millions of folks who funded it.

If you're going I-80 east, all the work is long done and fully open. Those going I-80 west, will be rerouted for the next four days. Starting 9 p.m. Thursday night until Tuesday 5 a.m., I-80 west will be completely closed for much needed repaving making it a much smoother, safer and far longer lasting ride for as much as 40 years.

Why four days over a holiday period?

"We targeted Labor Day Weekend because traditionally it's the lightest traffic we see in the Bay. That's gonna be about 200,000 vehicle trips that's going to be impacted by this closure," said Caltrans Public Information Officer Bart Ney.

This is one of Caltrans biggest maintenance closures ever and that means a detour, fortunately all on freeways. Westbound traffic must exit at I-780 in Vallejo to Pacheco, then catch Highway 4 to Hercules, finally getting back onto westbound 80 there; about ten extra miles. "We're going to be pouring 9000 cubic yards in lanes 2 and 3. This is going to be one long pour; so one long strip," said Ney.

Since few people even know how much 9,000 cubic yards of concrete is, allow us to explain. It's enough concrete to pave almost 16 football fields including the end zones, three inches deep. If you were to pour all that wet concrete into big-rig gasoline tank trucks, it would fill 202 of them. Closer to home, you could completely pack full, just over one million refrigerators.

But hassle-wise over the long haul, the total seven days of closure for the east and westbound lanes was worth it. "The way this project was designed, it was 106 nights of nighttime work all of this work would have taken," said Ney.

The funding comes from state Senate Bill 1; the gas tax, which has provided a boost to many Caltrans infrastructure projects.