Suny Day Paving
By Janis Mara
In a classic case of making lemonade from lemons, Caltrans is taking advantage of lighter traffic caused by Governor Newsom’s Covid-19 shelter-in-place order to speed up work in Alameda County, particularly along the Interstate 580 corridor in Oakland.
With traffic down as much as 70 percent in the Bay Area due to the novel coronavirus order, roadways in Alameda County – and throughout the region – are unusually empty. Seizing the opportunity, some Alameda County project teams are working during the daytime, which normally would cause too much congestion, and working longer shifts to get work done faster.
Resident Engineer Raif Rihani and his team jumped at the chance to accelerate their $37 million project on I-580. The project involves paving and grinding on shoulders and offramps on the westbound and eastbound sides of the freeway.
The work stretches for 11 miles from the State Route 238 separation to Boston Avenue in Oakland, and involves closing two lanes to accommodate the work. Under normal conditions, this stretch of I-580 is one of the most congested commutes in the Bay Area, and closing two lanes during the daytime would wreak havoc on an already challenging commute.
“Traffic was light, so we proposed to the Traffic Management Officer to allow us to close two lanes of I-580 during the daytime and give us a longer window in which to do work,” said Rihani. “The project team, including the contractor, De Silva Gates Construction, came up with the idea.”
“During the nighttime, when we normally do such work, we have only six or seven hours to work,” Rihani said.
On April 13, Traffic Management granted Rihani and his team a 9-hour daytime closure window, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then on April 27, the daytime window was extended to 12 hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The daytime hours and extended time windows will save Caltrans time, the resident engineer said. “Hopefully, we will finish much sooner than expected,” Rihani said.
Not only does daytime work speed up projects, “it improves safety and quality and reduces inconvenience to the traveling public,” said Igor Tsigelman, senior construction engineer on the I-580 project.
"Daytime work improves safety because the hazards of lane redirections, reflective markers, lights and flares make nighttime driving more difficult," said Tsigelman. “Drivers are more alert during the daytime.”
The I-580 team wasn’t the only team to seize the moment.
In March, resident engineer Asuta Patel had a weekend closure coming up for a repair project at the ramp connecting northbound SR-238 to southbound I-880 in San Leandro.
“Usually the timing for a project like this would be from Friday 7 p.m. to Monday 4 a.m. for three nights over the weekend,” Patel said. “But because of the COVID-19 Shelter in-place order, Traffic Management helped me and provided a closure window from Friday 7 p.m. to Monday 3:30 p.m.
“Because of that, we had an almost 12-hour window. I was excited to get the work done quickly,” Patel said.
Patel said that with the extended window, along with proper coordination and planning, backup equipment and a “what if” scenario, work was completed in one weekend, instead of two weekends.
The job was completed March 23. “Everyone on my team, my inspectors and structural engineer, worked hard to make this a success,” the resident engineer said.
Another example of accelerated work:
“We laid down over 50,000 tons of asphalt in just 23 working days on northbound I-680 between Fremont and Sunol,” said Wondwosen Alemayehu, the resident engineer on the I-680 paving project. “That wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the longer closure window we had due to light traffic.”
Traffic Operations gave the team a window of 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. to complete the paving project. Normally, a closure window of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. would have been in effect.
“We also completed electrical work for toll systems, drainage work and vegetation control utilizing daytime closures that helped us reduce the project completion time,” Alemayehu said.
“With daytime closures and longer closure windows at night, we saved about 10 working days. The project is still ongoing, and we anticipate completing the project by the middle of next year,” the resident engineer said.
These are only a few examples of the many Alameda project teams that recognized the opportunity and leapt at the chance to make their work more efficient. The flexibility and dedication of all Caltrans’ project teams is a testament to the fact that even a crisis can have an unexpected silver lining.