A recently announced $4.3 million federal grant will advance Oceanside’s plans to replace an aged, two-lane, steel truss bridge that carries traffic on North Coast Highway across the San Luis Rey River near Camp Pendleton.
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The grant, which the Oceanside City Council is expected to accept at a meeting Wednesday, will pay for right-of-way activities such as property acquisition and the coordination of numerous easements and utilities, Associated Engineer Luis Cardenas said in an email Friday.
“The project team is currently working towards completing 90% of the design for the construction documents,” Cardenas said.
“We anticipate beginning construction by the end of next year, after we complete the construction documents, right-of-way acquisition activities, and obtain all the necessary regulatory agency permits,” he said. Construction is expected to take 24 to 30 months.
Agencies including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the state Water Resources Control Board and the California Coastal Commission need to sign off on the project.
When the span was built in 1929, the highway, also known as state Route 101, was the primary route for drivers traveling between San Diego and Los Angeles. That continued until the construction of Interstate 5 in the 1960s.
A study presented by Oceanside planning officials in 2017 said the 950-foot-long structure was “deteriorated, structurally deficient … and seismically vulnerable,” and must be replaced. It also determined that the bridge was “fracture critical,” meaning the steel beams in each portion of the span are all under tension, and if one of them breaks, then the bridge would collapse.
At the time, construction was expected to begin in late 2019 and be completed in 2021 at a cost close to $30 million.
However, as with most large public infrastructure projects, progress has been slower than expected, and costs have increased.
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“The latest estimated construction costs with contingencies is approximately $85 million, including the demolition of the existing bridge,” Cardenas said. “This cost increase is due to economic and market conditions we’ve experienced in the last 10 years.”
A better estimate of costs will be available when construction documents are final, he said.
The project is being funded by the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Bridge Program through Caltrans, Cardenas said.
The new bridge will be built alongside the existing bridge so traffic can use the existing roadway and bridge during construction, according to an environmental document the city filed in 2024 with the state.
“No additional traffic lanes are proposed,” it states. “The existing two-lane bridge would be replaced with another two-lane bridge.”
The new span will be made of cast-in-place concrete reinforced with steel cables, the document states. Temporary cofferdams may be installed in the river so workers can pour the concrete support columns on dry land.
The design is fairly common for public facilities in California, which improves efficiency and helps to keep costs down, officials said.
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