RIO VISTA, Calif. — With the arterial Rio Vista Bridge set to close Friday from 9 p.m. through 4 a.m. Monday, people in the small town of Rio Vista spent Friday preparing.
"The problem is that for two days, we will not work," said Angel Antúnez Navor whose family owns Taqueria Mexico Restaurant. "We need to close, our customers complain there will be no food."
The Antúnez Navor family chose to close their small downtown business for the weekend because of the Highway 12 closure. They live in Isleton, which is normally a 15-minute drive across the bridge, but not this weekend.
"It's about two hours to go around," said Antúnez Navor. "It's a lot of time, a lot of waste, a lot of danger."
The weekend closure is the second in recent months with one more coming in early December and as many as seven more coming after the new year, Caltrans says.
"We've got three different kinds of work essentially happening. The first part is the pavement work, The second part is the structure work with the railings that are going to be taken off of the bridge and new railings put on and then you've also got some structure and electrical work that's going to be done on the final step," said Dennis Keaton, a Public Information Officer with Caltrans. "It's not wide enough to have that many crew on at one time and of course, we don't want any safety issues."
It's not just downtown being impacted. A local realtor said that because of the closure this weekend, he won't be able to hold any open houses. He spent the day out of town, stocking up himself for the long weekend.
"Everybody takes that bridge. It's very important," said Tricia Marlow, visiting Rio Vista Friday from Stockton. "I take it seriously, so it's like, get out while I can."
Marlow doesn’t live here, but her sister does.
"I have no idea what she's going to do," said Marlow. "Probably stay home."
Staying in town, but not necessarily at home is what Andrea Cross-Pearson is betting on. She owns Ben’s Friends of the Vine which is staying open to help bridge the local business gap over the weekend.
"We are fortunate enough that our staff here is all local, so we’re able to stay open," said Cross-Pearson. "We’re hoping this time that people continue to come down and support the businesses—definitely during this time when it’s a little bit more of a hardship on everybody."
For out-of-towners, however, Friday afternoon was the best time to leave.
"I don’t know how to get home any other way," said Marlow. "I’m going to get over that bridge."
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