The California Incline will reopen on Sept. 1, with a daylong party celebrating the iconic Santa Monica landmark’s rebirth.
But some of the 80,000 drivers using Pacific Coast Highway each day may grumble, as the incline’s reopening means a return of long-duration red lights.
The original three-lane bridge was built in 1929 and was closed in April, 2015 for demolition and reconstruction. The bridge traversed from the beach to the top of the palisades in northern Santa Monica, linking its downtown with PCH.
It was supposed to reopen in late May, but city officials pushed that back to reconstruct a pedestrian overpass above the incline itself. The old footbridge was replaced by a swooping concrete spiral, and engineers hail it as a new landmark on its own right.
“Our new California Incline is not only a feat of modern engineering, it’s the fruit of a great human effort,” said Curtis Castle, a civil engineer with the Public Works Department in Santa Monica. “Hundreds of individuals worked on this project day and night for 17 straight months.”
On the Thursday before Labor Day, a Santa Monica Big Blue Bus is slated to bust through a banner at 9 a.m. to celebrate the incline’s return.
Light refreshments will be offered, historic photos will be exhibited and unfettered pedestrian access will be allowed all day. The party will be cleared so autos can again use the incline at 5 p.m. Sept. 1.
The neon sign that spells out “Santa Monica” was preserved and will be reinstalled in a new concrete mount, engineers said.
Santa Monica mayor Tony Vazquez said the incline opening will commemorate the 120th anniversary of the construction of the Sunset Trail, a dirt road in the same place that was carved out of the packed gravel and dirt that makes up the palisades — a cliff that stretches along Santa Monica’s waterfront above PCH.
The $17 million project was funded by the federal government.”The vital link between Santa Monica and PCH demonstrates what federal dollars can do to support significant local infrastructure,” said Vazquez, the mayor.
The incline bridge was built in 1929 and ’30 to link the city with the brand new Theodore Roosevelt Highway through Malibu to Ventura. It quickly became a landmark, and was featured in a 1930s Keystone Cops comedy in which a long fire truck got stuck in the sharp intersectioin at the bottom, and was spun around by a Pacific Electric streetcar on the tracks that have long-since been removed.
But the incline’s concrete corroded, trucks and buses were too heavy for it, and there was insufficient sidewalk and bike path width. The final verdict for replacement came in after the Northridge Earthquake, when seismic engineers determined it was not anchored to the dirt and rock cliff under and next to it.
The new bridge sits on 96 deep concrete piles, and the dirt cliffs have been stabilized with more than 1,000 “soil nails,” according to the city. PCH has been further protected by a bluffs stabilization project north and south of the incline, already finished.
Traffic resuming on the California Incline will mean long red lights returning to the 80,000 vehicles per day on PCH, particularly northwest-bound traffic coming out of the McClure Tunnel.
But it will mean much less traffic in Santa Monica Canyon and at the intersections near the Santa Monica Pier, which have been clogged with traffic detouring around the closure for 17 months.
—City News Service