I-5 south through California.

[Scubadude62-WO]

I just finished a multi-day trip down I-5 from the Oregon Border to LA in a 40-foot DP. We traveled every bit of the highway except between the I-505 cutoff to the CA-12 merge just north of Stockton. Basically, we skipped Sacramento.

Coming out of the mountains, there were several steep sections with curves. We were comfortable around 50mph, but I did heat the brakes a bit on some of the steeper straight sections.

Once out of the mountains, the road has decent grade and alignment. Overall we thought the road surface was in pretty good shape, with two massive exceptions.

First, when going through the Grapevine, do you best to avoid the 2nd lane from the right. Absolutely disgusting surface condition. The far right lane is so much better, even though we had to pass several exceptionally slow trucks and had to wait a bit to pull out, but it was a much smoother ride.

Also for some reason, while the road surface in the San Joaquin Valley was excellent overall, CalTrans does not like to do the surfaces under overpasses. For about 100 yards on either side of every overpass the surface is very rough and twice we had stuff bounce off our table.

Finally, while we knew we were going to be arriving in LA at the beginning of the afternoon rush, it took us nearly 2-1/2 hours to get from Magic Mountain to Seal Beach. It was just a bear of a traffic day.

This was our experience ending today, June 2th, 2025.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Thank you for this report! The reason Caltrans does not resurface under overpasses is it would decrease the clearance under the bridge, i.e. if you add 1" of new pavement under the bridge the clearance becomes 1" less. Then they would have to update the database that provides safe routing for oversize loads, change clearance signs, etc.

 

[Scubadude62-WO]

There you go - mystery solved.

HOWEVER, most other states at least grind rough pavement like that smooth, and make repairs to potholes. There is no excuse for the state of the roadway under the overpasses.

 

[Lou Schneider]

There you go - mystery solved.

HOWEVER, most other states at least grind rough pavement like that smooth, and make repairs to potholes. There is no excuse for the state of the roadway under the overpasses.

California has a long history of doing road repairs and improvements as cheaply as possible, starting when then-governor Jerry Brown slashed Caltrans' highway budget in favor of developing mass transit back in the 1980s. They do things like only replacing pavement in strips along worn wheel ruts, leaving the old pavement in center of the lane in place.

Last winter flood waters took out about 20 miles of CA 127 between Baker and Shoshone in the Mojave desert. This isn't only a primary route into Death Valley, it's a popular way for big rigs to bypass Las Vegas when going from Los Angeles to Reno and points north. They observed the center of the road was intact, so rather than re-do the entire road surface they only repaired the damaged shoulders and road base, leaving about 10 ft. down the center of the road in place. So when you drive on it one wheel is on new pavement, the other rides on the original road surface.