State Route 47 is about to go quiet. Caltrans has handed a Skanska and California Engineering Contractors joint venture a $534 million contract to replace the deck of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, the green suspension span that carries SR-47 between San Pedro and Terminal Island at the Port of Los Angeles. Skanska’s share is $320 million. Work ramps up this spring, and the bridge closes for about 16 months.
That closure is the story. The Vincent Thomas moves a heavy share of Port of LA drayage, and shutting it reroutes trucks onto neighboring crossings and surface streets for more than a year.
Inside the Vincent Thomas Bridge deck replacement
The JV will strip the existing deck and install durable precast concrete panels, a method that trades a longer full closure for faster, more predictable panel-setting than pouring in place over live water. The job also adds structural-health monitoring and safety upgrades. Caltrans is running it as construction manager/general contractor, so the team priced and planned the work with the owner before the guaranteed price locked in. Completion is set for early 2029.
Why the 16-month closure is the hard call
Suspension-bridge decks wear out. The Vincent Thomas opened in 1963, and its deck has been patched about as long as it can be. Replacing it while keeping lanes open would drag the schedule out for years and cost more in traffic control and night work than the region wants to spend. Caltrans chose the shorter, sharper pain of a full shutdown.
Precast panels make that math work. Crews demolish a segment, drop in prefabricated panels, and move on, rather than waiting on cast-in-place concrete to cure. The approach is now common on high-cycle urban decks where every extra week of closure carries a real freight cost.
The bridge sits in the same port-access network as the Long Beach International Gateway Bridge, its newer neighbor across the harbor. Between them they carry the trucks that keep the nation’s busiest container complex moving. Freight planners have spent months modeling the detours. Come spring, they find out how good the models were.
Project profile: Vincent Thomas Bridge Deck Replacement on Exchange.