Caltrans and Mr. Fix-It-Fast, contractor C.C. Myers, met deadline No. 1 of their six-week Interstate 5 repair project this morning -- reopening the northbound lanes in downtown at 2:05 a.m. -- three hours ahead of schedule.
"It's looking good," state Department of Transportation chief Will Kempton said.
Traffic jams were infrequent during the initial 10-day freeway closure. Kempton commended Sacramento commuters.
"It's very clear the public paid attention and they figured out a way to make it work," he said.
Monday's reopening leaves only a couple of days to breathe easily, though.
The next closure - the second of four - comes Friday at 8 p.m. Crews will shut the freeway's southbound lanes from J Street to the Highway 50 interchange for 10 days.
Caltrans officials say, however, they expect traffic to flow pretty smoothly during the upcoming closures, and contractor C.C. Myers said he expects work to be easier for his crews in the coming weeks. Myers' crews have already begun closing a few southbound lanes on I-5 at night to get a jump on next week's work.
"If things go according to what we think, we can cut a day or more off" the next scheduled 10-day closure, Myers said.
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Some readers wonder about the rapid 24-hour cure concrete being used on the project. How strong is it?
Plenty, officials claim. It's made up half of a strengthening agent they call GGBFS – ground granulated blast furnace slag. It's the most slag the state Transportation Department has ever used in a concrete mix, and they say testing tells them it's 50-year tough.
Reusing slag, they brag, means this gray mix is environmentally "green."
Eco-friendly concrete?
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But concrete ain't so tough if it's saturated with water, which long has been the problem in the sunken freeway next to the river. When they dug up the road last week, they found drain pipes jammed with silt. Crews installed new pipes and a plastic drainage fabric under the road slab.
The pipes, pumps and fabric will be the real heroes, they say, if the project succeeds.
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People wondered why Regional Transit ran some commute trains last week with just one train car instead of the regular four.
Those were shadow trains, picking up overflow between regular commute service.
"We only have so many cars; we're putting all that we have," RT's Mark Lonergan said.
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After hesitating, the city is allowing bikes on the K Street Mall for the first time. It's only during the Big Fix, but some see it as a test to see if bikes and pedestrians can coexist permanently.
The theory is it's safer to get more bikes out of the more congested downtown traffic mix.
Police warn mall cyclists though: Keep it slow, really slow.
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Joanne Fankhauser of Natomas called with a commuter alert: The city has started prep work for closure of West El Camino Avenue to rebuild the canal bridge between Northgate and North Sacramento.
Officials say the closure, beginning June 18, was scheduled ahead of the Big Fix and needs to be done now.
Expect the bridge to be closed into the fall.
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Caltrans said they wouldn't use jackhammers on the freeway. Jackhammers are LOUD. Caltrans misspoke. Jackhammerers were out there all week drilling like dentists on cracked lanes. We checked with our man Chuck Dalldorf in the P Street condos over the freeway for a night noise report.
"Yoinks!" he said. "Grinding. Grating. Beep-beeping. It's a loud version of the Marathon Man movie."
But residents understand the work is necessary and temporary, he said.
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Traffic was odd last week. Many freeways were light, then suddenly there'd be a huge jam, sometimes far from the construction. The state is teaming with the University of California, Davis, to study project effects on travel patterns.
People definitely made changes, Professor Michael Zhang said, but researchers want to know:
Will the changes stick when the drilling is done?
E-mail your transportation concerns to backseat@sacbee.com or call Tony Bizjak at (916) 321-1059.
