Last Chance Grade Highway 101 closure

UPDATE

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Last Chance Grade: Safety, Stability, Reliability
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Great news! We have met our goal and will soon put an end to four-hour closures at Last Chance Grade. Beginning Monday, August 30, you can expect up to 30-minute delays in the area at all hours.

A huge THANK YOU goes out to the public for their patience and for “timing it right” as crews have battled a formidable slide on U.S. 101 south of Crescent City for most of this year. We are appreciative of the sacrifices made to ensure a more reliable route in time for the start of the school year and Labor Day weekend.

One-way traffic control is expected to remain in effect at Last Chance Grade until the fall of 2022 as crews are also still completing adjacent retaining wall work. After that, we anticipate the area will see two-way traffic for the first time since 2014.

For more updates, join Caltrans District 1 on social media.

ORIGINAL POST

Last Chance Grade schedule changes will accelerate our estimated slide-response completion date from November to the end of August.

[Note: The schedule is included at the bottom of this post, along with a video of the virtual town hall held on July 7, 2021 to discuss the emergency work at Last Chance Grade.]

By simply “timing it right” to arrive at Last Chance Grade slightly before and during these open windows, travel impacts can be greatly reduced as crews continue their hard work battling the elements and performing slope stabilization work.

Caltrans conducted extensive outreach in the last several weeks with our agency partners and other community leaders to plan and implement these changes.

The schedule, which is projected to shave months off long closures in the area, has also prompted questions about why night work is not currently a practical or efficient option for this project.

Unfortunately, night work is inefficient due to site constraints and the location of the slide. Fog is one of our main challenges in this coastal location. Even during the day, fog can have significant impacts on our work progress and worker safety. On top of that, the location of the slide also limits where we can place lights without them getting damaged by rockfall. We are currently removing debris at the high end of the slide which can make removing material safely impossible without proper lighting and visibility. This new accelerated schedule will hopefully advance the project to a point when extensive night work could be implemented.

We will be working at night by hauling off truckloads of debris during the daylight hours and continuing until 1 a.m. nightly to maximize production during closures. This hauling work will not affect traffic flows.

Safety is the number one priority for motorists, contractors, and the crews on-site.

Schedule

AS OF TUESDAY, JULY 6, MONDAY THROUGH THURSDAY the roadway will be OPEN until 8 a.m., CLOSED from 8 a.m. to noon, OPEN from noon to 3 p.m., closed from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and OPEN after 7 p.m. On FRIDAYS the roadway will be OPEN until 8 a.m., CLOSED from 8 a.m. to noon, and OPEN after noon. At all open times, including weekends, motorists should anticipate 30-minute delays.

See below for information on options for activities both north and south of the road closure.

Video

On July 7, 2021, Del Norte County District Supervisor Bob Berkowitz and Caltrans District 1 representatives discussed the emergency work at Last Chance Grade during a virtual town hall event. See below for a video of the Town Hall.

Last Chance Grade: Safety, Stability, Reliability

The Last Chance Grade Project is a collaborative effort to study alternatives for a permanent solution to instability and roadway failure on a 3-mile segment of US Highway 101 in Del Norte County, extending between Wilson Creek to 9 miles south of Crescent City.

Project Partners are considering alternatives that provide more reliable connections through the region; protect economic, environmental, and cultural resources; and reduce maintenance costs.