Caltrans holds ribbon cutting ceremony for Mud Creek Highway 1
The long awaited opening of Highway 1 along Mud Creek happened this past Wednesday.
But the official inauguration of the new roadway happened over at Ragged Point Inn on Friday, a good half hour south of Mud Creek.
“This is the biggest project I’ve worked on in my career with Caltrans. And I think it’s the biggest project that a lot of people have worked on in Caltrans,” said Joe Erwin, a project manager for Caltrans District 5.
On May 20, 2017, about 6 million cubic yards of debris came down onto Highway 1 in Mud Creek. It created 2,400 feet of new shoreline and 15 acres of new land.
Landslides are a regular occurrence in California. But Mud Creek presented its own challenges.
“We’re working right there on the shoreline so whenever you have an ocean environment trying to construct in that, it’s going to be challenging in general,” said Erwin. “You have the waves that are crashing up and eroding the soil from the job site.”
Caltrans hired a contractor, John Madonna Construction, who was already working on smaller landslides in the Mud Creek area. They had about 35 people out working 25 pieces of equipment from sunrise to sunset.
John Madonna says workers were out there for as long as 12 hours a day not including commute time. Some just could not stay on.
“When we first started, we were working seven days a week. A lot of the guys didn’t take days off for literally months,” said Madonna.
He says there was a lot of back and forth discussions with Caltrans during the course of the repairs. But workers remain committed in part because of the old builder’s pride.
“This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of something really big like I said like the Golden Gate Bridge or something of that sort. Something you can say I worked on that project,” said Madonna.
“It’s a testament to the engineers and to the planners and everybody that we have at Caltrans and our contractor,” said Erwin.
“It’s the connection, it’s the lifeline between San Luis Obispo County and Monterey County and a beautiful, important tourism route as well,” said State Assemblywoman Anna Caballero.
Caltrans does say there will be some maintenance work continued along Highway 1 in the Mud Creek area in the coming months.
