Quick Take
Caltrans will shut down sections of Highway 1 overnight from Sunday through Thursday so crews can remove temporary falsework on the Capitola Avenue overcrossing. The bridge between Capitola and Soquel could open by the end of January.
Caltrans will shut down sections of Highway 1 overnight from Sunday through Thursday so that crews can remove temporary falsework — structures to support a permanent structure until it can support itself — on the Capitola Avenue overcrossing between Soquel and Capitola, which has been closed for nearly two years. The state transit agency is aiming to wrap up the Capitola Avenue bridge project by the end of January.
Although the closures will take place on different sections of the freeway each day, only one direction will be shut down at any given time between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.
The closures will take place between the Park Avenue and Porter Street/Bay Avenue interchanges. On Sunday and Monday, southbound Highway 1 will be closed, and commuters will be directed to exit southbound Highway 1 at the Porter/Bay off-ramp to Soquel Drive. They can rejoin Highway 1 at Park Avenue.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, northbound Highway 1 will be closed in the same area at the same time. The detour is the same, but in reverse, with commuters getting off at the Park Avenue off-ramp and rejoining the highway at the Bay/Porter on-ramp.
The Capitola Avenue overcrossing project, which has shut down the bridge since March 2024, has run into a few delays. Caltrans and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission initially hoped to have it completed by early summer 2025, then by the end of November, and then by the end of December.
Caltrans District 5 spokesperson Kevin Drabinski told Lookout on Tuesday that now, the agencies are hoping for an end-of-January completion, and that the December finish date was pushed due to inclement weather. However, final touches like lane striping, are weather-dependent.
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