Cypress Street Viaduct - Reconstruction Around West Oakland

Reconstruction Around West Oakland

In 1997, the Nimitz Freeway was rerouted to loop around the area using a largely ground-level design with more conventional single-level viaduct. The space was mainly taken from a railroad yard which was relocated. The exit at Eighth Street was eliminated, a southbound exit near Seventh and Union Street and a single northbound and southbound exit at Seventh Street, near the Port of Oakland was constructed also providing access via a frontage road to Grand Avenue and the Oakland Army Base, before a viaduct-type interchange splitting traffic to the Bay Bridge via Grand Avenue and also northbound to the Eastshore Freeway.

During construction of the new section of the Nimitz Freeway, a team of archaeologists made many interesting discoveries about the people who lived in West Oakland in the 19th century.

Due to cost overruns, the costs of the replacement freeway doubled from initial estimates of $650 million to $1.25 billion ($250 million per mile) making the five-mile freeway replacement the most expensive project in the state's history at the time. (It would be subsequently overshadowed by the northbound addition of the Benicia Bridge and the Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.) The cost overruns were mainly due to the opposition to replacing the highway on the site of the one partially destroyed in 1989, having to purchase land and property from Southern Pacific Railroad and Amtrak (moving part of the rail yard, and causing the earthquake-damaged 16th Street Amtrak Station to be closed and replaced with two Amtrak stations in Jack London Square and Emeryville), the United States Postal Service (having to replace a parking lot with a parking garage), also replacing BART support beams and purchasing land from the U.S. Army (the freeway went through the Oakland Army Base to re-route the freeway).