The eastbound State Route 22 Freeway transition road to the northbound 405 and 605 freeways will be closed for 55 hours this weekend, which will require detours for anyone trying to access the those freeways from Long Beach.
The closure will begin as early as 10 p.m. Friday and will last through the weekend when the connector is expected to be reopened Monday morning at 5 a.m., according to a construction schedule posted by the Orange County Transit Authority.
Motorists trying to access either the northbound 605 or 405 over the weekend using Seventh Street will have to use detours. The suggested detour posted to the project’s Facebook page says drivers should travel south on the 405 and use the Seal Beach Boulevard exit to make a u-turn.
The connector is being closed so that work crews can install a drainage pipe as well as performing some guardrail work and paving. The project site advised that the work could be loud and that the times and dates of the work could be impacted by unforeseen operational factors or bad weather.
Improvements to the connector are part of larger freeway-widening project for a 16-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway in Orange County. OCTA and CalTrans have been working to widen the freeway between the 605 Freeway and State Route 73 in Costa Mesa for years.
Long Beach reached a $13 million settlement with OCTA and CalTrans in 2017 over the impacts that the project would have on Long Beach surface streets. City leaders said that the project would negatively impact some Long Beach surface streets by increasing the number of motorists using them as detours to avoid a bottleneck that the project could create where the 405 Freeway meets the 605 Freeway.