Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast is an international tourist attraction that usually funnels hundreds of thousands of tourists through the Central Coast each year, but the constant battle against Mother Nature and millions of dollars in road reconstruction costs have some wondering if enough is enough.
Chris Williams, of Dublin, Ireland, headed down from San Francisco with his family to check out this scenic highway.
"We actually didn't know that it was closed," Williams said. "It was my wife's cousin who informed us while we were driving down that we couldn't do the bottom half."
Following the cousin's advice, the Williams cut across and went back up to the Bay Area through the Central Coast.
But so many others can’t or won’t take the time to go around.
"It's great when we get people from all over the world coming to Cambria because the road is open and when they do, we have more people in town, we have more business, and we just do better when the road is open, so it's a real bummer," said Alan Fraser, a Cambria business owner.
Ringo Jukes from Gorman estimated that he is only seeing 10% of the visitors that normally come through the area, adding that it normally gets ridiculously crowded in July.
So what has the cost of the closures been to both businesses and taxpayers?
KSBY sent several requests to Caltrans to find out exactly how many days the highway has been closed and how much repair work has cost.
While they didn’t have the total number of days the highway has been closed, in an email last March, officials confirmed the total cost of repairs since February 2023 is close to $400 million.
But State Senator John Laird said it’s worth it to keep working on it, no matter the cost, and the state is trying to spend money to help stabilize it for the future.
"In some places, there is a possibility of moving it in a little or making it a little more resilient against the slides, but not in others," Laird said. "And I think everybody's taking a good, hard look now at what the long-term strategy is and if there's things we can do."
The last remaining closure along Highway 1 right now is at Regents Slide. It's supposed to reopen by the end of the year, but there will still be one-way traffic north of the Rocky Creek bridge with a temporary signal.
Laird says officials are concerned the road may not handle the demand. They're not currently considering limiting how many cars can drive on the highway, but they are keeping an eye on it. Even so, Laird says he will continue to fight for Highway 1.
"I'm all the way in and I want it to stay open," Laird said. "It's a jewel, and yet we have to really be prepared. We have to respond, and at the same time, we can't take everybody that wants to come over time. I think one of the last years that the highway was open all the way through, 4 million people came and they were parking on fire roads."
