SANTA CLARITA, CA (Thursday, Aug. 9, 2017)—Two years of construction work has begun on 15.8 miles of Interstate 5 through Castaic and Santa Clarita. The I-5 work area extends from a half-mile south of State Route 14 (the Antelope Valley Freeway) to 1.7 miles north of Lake Hughes Road.

The contractor, Atkinson Construction, will mainly be working through the night between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weeknights on the southbound and northbound sides of the freeway. Concrete pavement will be replaced in the outside lanes (#3 and #4 lanes). In the inside lanes (#1 and #2 lanes), broken concrete slabs will also be replaced and the lanes will receive profile grinding to ensure a smooth surface for vehicles, an announcement from Caltrans said on August 9. Concrete barriers were placed in July on the southbound side of I-5 for the first stage of the project.

“On most nights, at least two freeway lanes will be kept open for traffic in the work zone, except from midnight to 4 a.m. when at least one lane normally will be open for traffic. Closure of all freeway lanes is expected to occur infrequently during the project,” the Caltrans announcement said.

The $171 million project is designed to repair 50-year-old concrete pavement that serves one million vehicles per week, many of them heavy big-rig trucks. The completion date for the project is expected to be in 2019.

This is part of the August 25, 2017 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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