Daniel Weintraub: State invests $1 billion to rebuild path over Sierra

TRUCKEE – High on the Sierra crest above this old railroad town, the granite rocks are scarred with ruts carved by the wheels of the wagons pioneers hauled over Donner Summit 150 years ago.

And down below on Interstate 80, the modern equivalent of the pioneer trail, the concrete pavement has deep grooves worn by the tires and chains of the millions of cars and trucks that have climbed the summit every year since the highway opened nearly 50 years ago.

Interstate 80's pavement, originally designed to last 20 years, is crumbling, making the journey over its lanes bumpy and dangerous, if not quite as treacherous as the trip California's early settlers took across the mountains in their day.

And so the people of California are paying to rebuild the highway, lane by lane and mile by mile, from Auburn to the Nevada state line. This year, and for the next four or five years, the section between Truckee and Soda Springs, up and over Donner Summit, will be in a constant state of construction and change, part of a commitment of tax dollars that will eventually top $1 billion.

"We're rebuilding the entire corridor, said Shelly Chernicki, a Caltrans spokeswoman. "We are 60 percent done and we have 40 percent left to do."

Taken together, the 15 projects that are part of the I-80 restoration are probably the biggest current undertaking in the State Highway Operation and Protection Plan, California's ongoing effort to restore and rebuild the roads and bridges built over the past century to serve a much smaller population.

Later this month the state will shut down Interstate 5 through downtown Sacramento for another huge restoration project. But while that closure will be a big inconvenience to commuters and interstate travelers alike, at least in the city there are plenty of surface streets onto which traffic can be re-routed. No such luxury exists at 7,000 feet in the Sierra, where it would be impossible to send 28,000 cars a day onto the only alternate route – the narrow, twisting two-lane road that was once the main path over the crest.

Instead, the state and its highway contractors have had to get creative. Last year, they widened I-80 eastbound over the pass so that this year they could close the westbound freeway and still have four lanes of traffic flowing without delays in each direction. All summer, traffic going toward Sacramento and the coast will be shifted to the eastbound lanes and divided from eastbound traffic by concrete barriers. Next year, the entire process will be reversed.

The westbound section of a bridge at Castle Peak has already been demolished, and it will be replaced. The roadway, meanwhile, is being ripped up and the concrete recycled on the spot with the help of a giant machine that pulverizes the pavement back into aggregate that can be used as part of the new roadbed. That will save time and money and be better for the environment because materials won't have to be hauled for hundreds of miles to the job site.

Dan Schultz, a vice president of Teichert Construction, said the rough terrain and short construction season make the Donner project a high-pressure job. The company must have this section of the project complete and the freeway back to normal by Oct. 15 or face financial penalties.

"We don't know what is going to happen up there," Schultz said. "We can get snow in July. There is no room for error." If bad weather forces delays, the company will work double or even triple shifts. "No matter what," he said, "we are going to get this job done."

Caltrans is taking a similar attitude with the entire I-80 project. Using normal timetables, the restoration could have taken 15 years to complete. But the department's director, Will Kempton, pushed to accelerate and overlap the various pieces to minimize the disruption to travelers.

"This is quite a historic event," said Mike Bartlett, the project manager for the state. "This number of projects, the scope of the work being undertaken in this effort, you don't see it in this day and age. A lot of money is being committed to these projects. The decision was made to get in there and get it done and get out."

While the state is spending $2 billion a year on bridge and highway restoration, that's not even half what Caltrans estimates is needed to keep the system in tact. Much of the gasoline tax collected at the pump goes for this purpose, but that revenue has been eroded by inflation and does not go as far as it once did, even as the state's population grows, more cars are on the road and people are driving more miles. So every year, a little more pavement wears away, more cracks form and the cost of eventually fixing it grows even higher.

California has 50,000 lane miles of highways, 12,500 bridges, 205,000 culverts and 87 roadside rest stops. All of that represents a huge investment. We shouldn't let it fall apart. To keep up, we are going to need a lot more projects like the one that's now paving a renewed path across the Sierra.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Daniel Weintraub, (916) 321-1914. Readers can see his California Insider political blog at CapitolAlert.com