Repaving work on Interstate 80 was completed late Monday, allowing the freeway to reopen following a near four-day closure.
A stretch of westbound I-80, from Interstate 780 in Vallejo to Highway 4 in Hercules, has been closed since Thursday night for a major repaving project. The freeway was originally scheduled to reopen on Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, motorists have had to deal with traffic and detours during the Labor Day holiday weekend.
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“Normally, we would take the Bay Bridge and head over that, but it said, ‘due to road closure, we’re going to take you a different route,’ “ said Robert Mains, who was driving to San Francisco from Sacramento Sunday.
He knew he wouldn’t take the usual route and did make the best of it, but it still meant more time on the road this holiday weekend.
“Twenty to 30 minutes,” said Mains. “And when you think about that in terms of percentage, that’s a big percentage! So it’s definitely affecting things.”
The work is expected to improve things for drivers and for the road, as well as last a long time. Caltrans has justified doing the project over Labor Day weekend by pointing to a drop in Bay Area traffic.
“We’re well into it,” said Bart Ney, a Caltrans spokesperson. “We’re about halfway through with the concrete paving.”
“Traffic is not so bad on Sunday, but we do expect it to pick up on Monday,” Ney added. “So motorists coming through the area, if they can stay out and use Interstate 5 and not come down into this space, you will avoid that congestion.”
Caltrans said the round-the-clock closure over the holiday weekend allows the agency to compress what would have been 100 nights of roadwork into a five-day project.
