More Major Badlands Closures Planned As Crews Remove Boulders

BEAUMONT, CA — All of the westbound lanes on a stretch of roadway between Beaumont and Moreno Valley will be shut down the nights of Wednesday, Oct. 9 and Thursday, Oct. 10, officials announced. The closures are preparation for a separate 40-hour closure of the westbound side of the freeway as construction continues on the State Route 60 Truck Lanes Project.

According to the Riverside County Transportation Commission, a roughly five-mile stretch of the westbound 60 between Jack Rabbit Trail and Gilman Springs Road, in a desolate area known as the Badlands, will be inaccessible beginning at 10 p.m. tonight, reopening at 5 a.m. Thursday. The closure will be repeated during the same hours Thursday night and Friday morning.

The consecutive night closures are intended to give crews space to position equipment and begin removing boulders from hillsides along the route. Most of the removals, however, will occur during a full closure on the westbound 60 in the Badlands from 4 a.m. Saturday to 8 p.m. Sunday.

One of the two eastbound lanes will also be closed during this time.

Crews will work through the weekend to remove large rocks from the hillside, the RCTC said. The closures are needed "for the safety of crews and motorists."

"Expect significant delays, allow extra travel time, and avoid the area by using I-10 as a detour route," the agency said.

The Badlands work is part of the $138 million State Route 60 Truck Lanes Project, overseen by Skanska USA, which got underway in May and is slated to continue until the end of 2021.

The project entails installing specially designated truck lanes for safety and to reduce congestion through the sparsely populated area, which features steep hills and lacks freeway frontage roads.

A single collision on either side of the narrow four-lane segment has been known to tie up traffic for hours, forcing the California Highway Patrol to divert motorists back into Beaumont or Moreno Valley, depending on which way they're headed.

In addition to adding a truck lane on each side of the freeway, crews are flattening several of the most curvy road sections to improve motorists' visibility and widening freeway shoulders to 12 feet along the outside lanes, and 11 feet on the inside lanes, adjacent to the center divider.

The contract further calls for construction of 23 wildlife crossings beneath the corridor, as well as fencing on either side to prevent animals from straying into traffic.

The project is being funded through Measure A county sales taxes, as well as grants from state and federal sources.

More information is available at rctc.org/60trucklanes .

— City News Service contribute to this report