Contruction along 880 corridor will mean better roads

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) -- Interstate 880 is a hive of construction activity and will be for several more years. There are three active projects between 5th Avenue in Oakland and the 92 interchange in Hayward. Two have just wrapped up and two more are starting soon.

Two more are coming soon: phase one and two of rehabilitating the road surface between 5th and High.

"We do want to make sure the public has a heads-up on what's going on; there will be major traffic shifts, sometimes there will be lane closures, on-ramp and off-ramp closures," Caltrans spokesperson Matt Robinson said.

The first section of the new 5th Avenue bridge is done, but completion is still three years away. When done, the bridge will be slightly wider, with shoulders. The major challenge there is working directly over an active railroad.

"The railroad has a lot of specifications that you have to do, protective cover, tracks are protected, having railroad flaggers making sure if a train is coming to get away from the tracks, things like that, so it's constant coordination with Union Pacific, who is the railroad," construction and traffic manager Scott McCrank said.

At High Street, the new bridge foundations are in, but Oakport Street has to be moved about 60 feet toward Alameda before the new, wider bridge can be built.

At the 880-92 interchange in Hayward, wrapped columns wait for the new westbound 92 bridge. When completed about a year from now, the new interchange should eliminate the bottleneck that has plagued the area for years. The solution is bridges.

"Some of the bridges are tall, others diving underneath others bridges, so if you can't go wide, you just build up," McCrank said.

Starting soon there will be rehabilitation of truck lanes between 5th and High. One-thousand concrete slabs will be replaced to smooth out the bumpy ride. This will have major traffic impacts, mostly at night and on weekends.

"The folks who'll be traveling to A's games at night, they'll see some of the construction, folks traveling from the airport say, going north," Robinson said.

The last of these current projects should wrap up in 2014, but Caltrans warns they always have a wish-list for more.

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caltrans, hayward, highway 92, I-880, oakland, construction, bay area traffic, heather ishimaru

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