Highway 99 in Fresno to get $400 million overhaul. These two exits will close permanently

A three-mile stretch of Highway 99 through west-central Fresno will undergo a major facelift starting next year, and the price tag for the work is estimated at about $400 million.

The Fresno City Council, at its meeting Thursday, will consider revisions to an agreement with the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, that will encompass the freeway work between Clinton Avenue and El Dorado Street, just south of the Highway 180 interchange.

The extensive work calls for reconstructing the highway’s concrete pavement and rebuilding several bridges, as well as closing two sets of on- and off-ramps at Belmont and McKinley avenues and improving the Olive Avenue interchange with the freeway. Caltrans also plans to acquire additional right-of-way property to allow for widening the freeway from its current configuration of three lanes in each direction to four.

“The existing pavement within the project limits is deteriorating, cracking, and settling so much that pavement rehabilitation is needed,” according to a project statement on the Caltrans District 6 website.

Construction is expected to start in late 2024 and continue into 2029.

Closing the Highway 99 on- and off-ramps from Belmont and McKinley avenues without replacing them will reduce the number of traffic interchanges for drivers. They won’t be reopened because they are too close to other ramps to provide safe entry and exit to the freeway, creating traffic congestion during peak commute hours, according to a staff presentation to the council.

Highway 99 truck route extension on list of changes

But closing the Belmont ramps will also erase part of what is currently considered an important route for commercial truck traffic serving industrial businesses in the area of Palm and Belmont avenues, including Producers Dairy and La Tapatia Tortilleria, said Andrew Benelli, Fresno’s city engineer, in a report to the council.

“The removal of the Belmont Avenue entrance and exit ramps from State Route 99 will require trucks that want freeway access to use a different route,” Benelli wrote. “Caltrans is recommending that H Street between Divisadero and Fresno streets be designated as a truck route, as the preferred alternative to minimize impacts to adjacent neighborhoods.”

Benelli added that Fresno Street is already a designated truck route between G Street and Highway 99, so the state is recommending extending the truck route on Fresno Street east to H Street, on the east side of the Union Pacific Railroad freight rail tracks.

Another change that drivers will eventually confront is a new interchange at Olive Avenue that will include traffic roundabouts on Olive, both east and west of the freeway to connect to the on- and off-ramps for both the northbound and southbound highway lanes.

An improved sound wall to shield nearby Roeding Park from the adjacent freeway noise is also part of the rehabilitation project.

Caltrans reports that it expects its property acquisition for right of way to add future lanes and its design work for the project to be completed by April 2024, with construction commencing in the fall of 2024.

Work on the Olive Avenue and El Dorado Street bridges is set for stage one of construction from the fall of 2024 through 2025, including the new Olive Avenue roundabouts and connections to adjacent local streets.

Throughout most of 2026, scheduled work includes the permanent closure of the Belmont and McKinley ramps in February. The McKinley Avenue bridge over Highway 99 will be widened, and the existing Tielman Avenue bridge over the freeway will be removed and cul de sacs built on either side of the freeway.

Rebuilding the freeway lanes with new concrete pavement is planned for 2027 on new outside lanes while keeping three inside lanes moving in each direction. From late 2027 and throughout 2028, work will shift to the rebuilding the inner lanes as traffic moves to the outer lanes.