Highway 1 is reopening this week in Big Sur — 1 week ahead of schedule
Highway 1 will reopen near Big Sur a week ahead of schedule, following a months-long storm-related closure, Caltrans announced Monday.
The scenic stretch of highway between Cambria and Carmel will open at noon on April 23, a week ahead of the agency’s most recent estimate and about two months ahead of the original target date.
Until then, about five miles of the road will remain closed to through traffic.
The earlier reopening gives area businesses a few weeks to gear up before Mother’s Day and more than a month to prepare for the Memorial Day weekend. Based on recent traveler traffic along the North Coast, that holiday promises to be a big one.
According to Caltrans, the earlier reopening is happening because of an increased pace of final roadway paving. In addition, favorable weather has helped crews speed repairs.
“Reopening Highway 1 at Rat Creek less than three months after a washout of this magnitude is great news for residents, recreationalists, business owners and those who move goods through this region,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin. “Caltrans has been focused on the emergency work needed to increase the resiliency of this highway section to extreme weather and the fixes made will allow for safe travel.”
Highway 1 has been closed at that location, about 70 miles north of Cambria, since a late January storm dumped 17 inches of rain on the area, triggering a debris flow from the 2020 Dolan Fire burn scar.
Crews have worked on site since immediately after the Jan. 28 washout to repair the damage from the mudslide, working seven days a week during daylight hours.
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That schedule has allowed Highway 1 to reopen at Rat Creek in just 86 days.
As Caltrans spokesman Kevin Drabinski said, “The fact that we were able to keep to such an advanced timeline comes from our own internal pride in keeping state highways open and safe.”
He added that residents and businesses in affected communities pulled together during the closure.
“Everyone lived through the same Dolan Fire, everyone lived through the intense rains that caused the washout,” Drabinski said, along with the highway closure, pandemic restrictions and the shutdown of Hearst Castle.
During the construction project, approximately 70,000 cubic yards of debris material was removed from the canyon while a repair design strategy was being evaluated, Caltrans said.
Once an enhanced fill strategy was identified in late February, the agency introduced 45,000 cubic yards of fill dirt, capable of being compacted to support the roadway above, into the canyon.
Caltrans said some construction tasks will continue over the next few months, including installation of permanent guardrail, replacing the K-rail now in place.
Crews will also work on construction of headwalls at the culvert inlets, final grading features and placement of erosion control measures on both sides of the roadway.
As crews complete the remaining construction work over the next few months, intermittent traffic control at that location may cause delays of up to 10 minutes for motorists. Message and directional signs will be in place to alert motorists when one-way reversing traffic control is required.
The Caltrans release said, “One component yet to be started is a tunneling operation to install a steel pipe culvert that’s 10 feet in diameter and 1 inch thick, which will pass from the canyon, through the fill below the roadway, and outlet to the ocean.”
This key piece of infrastructure will substantially improve water-flow capacity during future storm events. It will be augmented by a 5-foot-diameter culvert and two 24-inch culverts that have already been installed closer to the grade of the highway.
The redundancy of the drainage infrastructure is designed to make the highway more resilient to extreme weather conditions, which will allow for safe travel, Caltrans said.
Good news for local businesses hard hit by closures, pandemic restrictions
Mel McColloch, longtime president of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce board, was ebullient Monday when he heard about the Highway 1 reopening at Rat Creek.
“This is probably the best day I’ve had representing the community in a long time, having that highway open for the summer,” he said, especially considering that Caltrans said at one time that the road might not reopen until the end of July.
“Caltrans did such an excellent job,” McColloch said, “everybody ought to give them a thank you.”
Although Cambria has become a vacation destination in its own right in recent years, McColloch said the highway reopening still could have a significant effect on the bottom line of North Coast businesses hard hit by the road closure, the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
Due to storm damage to the two-lane, 5-mile access road to the hilltop estate, Hearst Castle may extend its closure even longer.
McColloch said he’s working on the issue with Dan Falat, superintendent of the state park district that includes the Castle.
This week, engineering crews will begin using geotechnical equipment to determine the extent of the damage, McColloch said, “to see what it will take to fix it, and is there any patching that can be done to get one lane open” so the Castle can resume tours as soon as pandemic restrictions allow.
Because of the complexity of the situation, the soonest State Parks would get “a solid answer ... would be about 90 days,” Falat reportedly told McColloch.
“It depends on how fast they can analyze the data and what the data shows,” Falat said.
Until that comes in, the official expectation for getting the information is still “four to six months,” Falat said Monday. “But we hope the process goes faster than that, for a faster recovery, much like the reopening of Highway 1 did.”
Falat called the April 23 reopening date at Rat Creek “definitely good news for sure, much faster than what everybody expected in the beginning. The reopening will be good for travel and tourism and help with the summer” trade.
Theresa de Alba, and her husband, Miguel, own Manta Rey Restaurant on San Simeon’s motel row.
“We are hopeful that, with the road open, people will be encouraged to stay in San Simeon,” Theresa de Alba said via text Monday.
However, she added, “The whole reason San Simeon exists is because of Hearst Castle, so I’m still afraid things won’t be back to normal until it opens” again for public tours.
Erica Crawford, CEO and president of the Morro Bay Chamber of Commerce, also expressed excitement about Highway 1 opening.
“Having that access open for that bucket-list drive, with more people flowing freely north and south, is much better for our businesses that are tourist dependent,” she said, adding that, depending on visitors’ direction of travel, “Morro Bay is kind of at the end or the beginning of that drive.”
News of the road reopening brought a lot of glee north of Rat Creek, too.
Stan Russell of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce said Monday that “Everyone’s pretty excited.”
“Highway 1 means to the world to us,” he said, calling Caltrans’ ability to reopen the road more than two months early “just fantastic.”
He said he expects there may be “the shortest speech ever” prior to the actual release of traffic to flow through the closure area Friday, a simple, quick “thank you.”
“Nobody wants to hold up traffic” on the internationally acclaimed All-American Highway, Russell added.
Before business can really rebound, Russell said, pandemic restrictions will have to be loosened and lifted.
“If the restaurants can open at 100% capacity by June 15, that puts us right back to normal,” Russell said. “We have to keep from having another surge, keep the virus contained and the counts going down.”
This story was originally published April 19, 2021 at 11:06 AM with the headline "Highway 1 is reopening this week in Big Sur — 1 week ahead of schedule."
