This season's incessant rains have caused more than inconvenience and traffic jams on California's roads and highways — they've inflicted $259 million of damage to the state's transportation system since December.
"Mudslides, landslides, washouts, sinkholes, potholes — you name it," said David Anderson, a Caltrans spokesman.
Some of the worst damage is at Devil's Slide on Highway 1 in San Mateo County. The highway remains closed from Montara to Pacifica because of an unstable rock-face above the roadway that has sent boulders — two of them 7 feet in diameter and weighing 4 tons — onto the highway. In two locations, the pavement is sinking.
Caltrans officials warned Thursday night that the closure at Devil's Slide could be lengthy. Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss said the movement of the soggy soil beneath the highway appears to be in the same location as the 1995 slide that closed Highway 1 for six months.
"It's too early to tell the extent of the slide, but telltale signs indicate it's in the same spot, and that doesn't bode well for a quick fix," he said. "We could have to close the road for months, not weeks."
Sinkholes have closed Highway 152 between Watsonville and Gilroy and Highway 120 — one of the entrances to Yosemite National Park — between Highway 49 and Groveland. Landslides have closed Highway 1 near Lucia and Highway 144 in Santa Barbara County.
Storms delivered damage to state highways in 449 locations around the state, according to Caltrans. Rains in March caused $70.4 million of damage in 88 places. And while Thursday brought rare sunshine and a respite from the rainfall, forecasts call for the wet weather to continue at least into next week. More rain means more damage to roads.
"Rains are a huge problem," said Wes Wells, manager of the local streets and roads program for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco Bay Area's regional transportation planning agency. "The more it rains, the more rain goes down into the substructure (of the roads). The potholes get deeper; the cracks extend."
Winter and spring are always pothole season, with water seeping into cracks in the pavement and the pressure of cars and trucks causing a hydraulic or pumping effect that produces potholes and more cracks.
But this year's relentless rains have caused water tables to rise — particularly on roads close to the coast, the bay or other bodies of water — and eat away at pavement from the bottom as well as the top, said Bob Haus, a Caltrans spokesman.
"It causes slip-outs, sinkholes minor and major, and general potholes and cracking," he said. "You get this much rain, it has an impact."
That impact can be significant, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the freeways and highways were last summer rated by a highway lobbying group as some of the worst in the nation, and where regional officials estimate an annual funding shortfall of $450 million in repairing city and county streets, roads and highways.
Caltrans maintains about 1,400 miles of highways in the nine-county Bay Area, but cities and counties are responsible for the upkeep of 19,000 miles of streets and roads, Wells said.
"There's a lot of them out there that have potholes and extensive cracking," he said. "With more rain comes more potholes and more cracks — and more damage for people who have to drive on those roads."
Perhaps nobody knows that better than Jose Luis Vargas, who not only runs an auto alignment and suspension shop in San Francisco, but commutes to his business from Tracy over increasingly pothole-pocked freeways.
"There's humungous potholes out there," said Vargas, pointing to Interstate 580 between Highway 24 and the MacArthur Maze, and in the Livermore area, as the worst stretches. "All the asphalt is gone, and they're all over the place."
But while his commute is getting bumpier, Vargas said, his business has been booming as the rains continue to fall.
In recent weeks, he's seen an increase in alignments as well as suspension repairs and tire and wheel replacements. A recent customer is the owner of a 2006 Mercedes-Benz who slammed into a pothole before the Bay Bridge. His bill will total about $3,000, Vargas said.
"The people who make money when it keeps raining are me because of potholes, and body shops because of accidents," he said. "For me, this is good for business."