San Pedro's Vincent Thomas Bridge Closes Saturday for 16 Months

Caltrans is replacing the bridge deck in a $752.8 million project and sending 53,000 daily trips onto Harbor Area detours until March 2028.

On an average day, about 53,000 vehicles cross the Vincent Thomas Bridge between San Pedro and Terminal Island. Starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, none will, and Caltrans expects to keep it that way until March 1, 2028.

The state is shutting both directions of State Route 47 between Harbor Boulevard and Ferry Street, plus the on-ramps and highway connectors that feed it, so crews can tear out and rebuild the bridge's whole concrete deck, Random Lengths News reported Wednesday. The cost is $752.8 million. The rebuild also brings new railings, fencing, a new median, lighting, signs and seismic sensors.

The squeeze starts a night early. At 10 p.m. Friday, southbound SR-47 closes for a while between Navy Way and Ferry Street. By 10:45 p.m., the southbound lanes from Ferry to Harbor Boulevard and the Ferry Street on-ramp are closed too. Just after midnight the rest goes: the whole span, along with the northbound approaches from Harbor Boulevard, southbound Interstate 110 and Miraflores Avenue.

According to Caltrans' Oct. 22 announcement, the bridge itself is structurally sound. The deck is the problem, worn down by more than 60 years of heavy loads and the salt air off the harbor. Nearly 9% of the bridge's daily traffic is heavy trucks. The area it serves is close to twice as big as it was when the span went up in 1963, Nathan Bass of Caltrans District 7 told CBS Los Angeles. In that time, the neighboring ports became the country's busiest for container cargo.

Drivers will be sent mainly along Interstates 710 and 110, State Route 103 and Harry Bridges Boulevard. Caltrans says it already repaved and restriped stretches of those routes and added traffic cameras and temporary signals. Officers will direct traffic by hand at 18 intersections, and local police plan to step up enforcement on commercial trucks. Not every camera sits on the detour: Caltrans told CBS Los Angeles some are going up on Pacific Coast Highway, Sepulveda Boulevard and other roads running alongside it.

The Port of Los Angeles says all its terminals will stay open, rail cargo won't be touched, and only 8% of the port complex's drayage truck trips use the bridge. The port adds that those drivers may lose some time on the detours. For the 53,000, that's the whole forecast.

Caltrans is asking people to skip trips they don't need to make near the closure, take transit where they can and check its QuickMap before heading out. The local council member, whose own statement says his district covers the Harbor communities, says he'll be watching.

“For 16 months, this closure will have a significant impact on the people who live and work in our Harbor communities,” Councilmember Tim McOsker said in the Caltrans announcement. He said his office pushed to keep detour traffic out of residential streets and would stay involved “to address problems as they arise.”

Source: randomlengthsnews.com, retrieved November 5, 2026. Other sources: State of California, CBS News, portoflosangeles.org.