It won’t be long before motorists fill the tunnels at Devil’s Slide with traffic as crews poured the last bit of concrete pavement yesterday to mark another significant milestone for the nearly 5-year-old project.

Actually, it will be a while before cars can enter the tunnel but yesterday’s completion of the two roads will now allow crews to jump to the next phase of the project — connecting the two southern tunnel portals with Highway 1.

Caltrans is hoping to have the tunnels open to traffic by the end of this year and be completely off the site by March 2013, said senior engineer Tom Gray.

“We are looking for ways to improve the schedule,” Gray said.

The project is behind schedule and over budget as Caltrans had intended to open the tunnels to traffic in early 2012 but tunnel soil movement required months of reinforcement work, putting the project behind schedule by nearly a year.  

The original estimate for the work was about $350 million but Caltrans has since allocated at least $439 million for its completion.

 

Read the full story here: