Just how important is US 101 to rural NorCal?

[nexus73]

Having seen the slide on Last Chance grade take place recently, I checked out Caltrans' website and found this statement of economic impact when the whole shebang plops into the Pacific, which is inevitable.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist1/d1projects/last_chance_grade/lcg_econ_final_2015.pdf

Two to three years is what Caltrans projects to build a bypass and that would be a record speed for that agency...LOL!  In the meantime, transportation being disrupted would cost billions over the course of time it will take to build that bypass.  An intelligent person would know "it's coming!" and work accordingly, but as we have seen from the Oroville Dam mess, California is not on the ball at all when it comes to being proactive.  That costs more than doing the job right!

Rick

[kkt]

It would cost billions if 101 was completely closed to all vehicles for the entire duration of construction, but that seems unlikely.

[bigdave]

Having seen the slide on Last Chance grade take place recently, I checked out Caltrans' website and found this statement of economic impact when the whole shebang plops into the Pacific, which is inevitable.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist1/d1projects/last_chance_grade/lcg_econ_final_2015.pdf

Two to three years is what Caltrans projects to build a bypass and that would be a record speed for that agency...LOL!  In the meantime, transportation being disrupted would cost billions over the course of time it will take to build that bypass.  An intelligent person would know "it's coming!" and work accordingly, but as we have seen from the Oroville Dam mess, California is not on the ball at all when it comes to being proactive.  That costs more than doing the job right!

Rick

Up to a billion dollars for a new routing is mind boggling, but then I remember that the Willits bypass cost around $300 million. In my neck of the wood, that kind of money buys a lot of freeway miles.

David

[nexus73]

It would cost billions if 101 was completely closed to all vehicles for the entire duration of construction, but that seems unlikely.

You talk like someone who has never been on that section of 101.  There's a good reason the route runs as it does.  Take a guess...go ahead....take a guess!
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Here's why.  There was no easier place to run the highway!  It just so happens to be on land that will sooner or later will be in the ocean.  Once that happens, there is no local detour possible.  Yeah, the terrain is THAT tough! 

The state of Oregon had a series of I-5/US 97 bridges which were closed to trucking industry traffic due to their being in substandard condition.  The result was detours that cost around $10 billion before those bridges were replaced.  I've seen this story of transportation gaps clobbering the movement of goods before in my region.

Rick

[Quillz]

That is one of the issues with the North Coast, there are very few viable alternatives to the 101. Had something like the CA-169 gap been filled in, there could be an inland connection from, say, Klamath down to Willow Creek. But between CA-169 and US-199, there is no viable inland parallel to US-101.

I would imagine there are a multitude of factors, both political and geographical, that have prevented US-101 from either being moved inland, or a parallel route being constructed.

[kkt]

I have been up and down 101 on the north coast several dozen times.

There are always alternatives, it's just a matter of how painful they are.  Caltrans has already evaluated them.  See the other reports on their web site.  Yes, it'll take a long time to get a replacement completed, but if there were such a large slide as to cut it off completely, I'm sure they would either speed it up or build a temporary.

[Quillz]

I have been up and down 101 on the north coast several dozen times.

There are always alternatives, it's just a matter of how painful they are.  Caltrans has already evaluated them.  See the other reports on their web site.  Yes, it'll take a long time to get a replacement completed, but if there were such a large slide as to cut it off completely, I'm sure they would either speed it up or build a temporary.

How often do large slides cut off entire segments of roadway? What I experienced near Crescent City was quite bad, but traffic was still safely routed into one lane.

There are numerous west-east alternates, but the road quality seems very hit-or-miss. Some are not entirely paved, but are still fine for most automobiles.

[nexus73]

I have been up and down 101 on the north coast several dozen times.

There are always alternatives, it's just a matter of how painful they are.  Caltrans has already evaluated them.  See the other reports on their web site.  Yes, it'll take a long time to get a replacement completed, but if there were such a large slide as to cut it off completely, I'm sure they would either speed it up or build a temporary.

How often do large slides cut off entire segments of roadway? What I experienced near Crescent City was quite bad, but traffic was still safely routed into one lane.

There are numerous west-east alternates, but the road quality seems very hit-or-miss. Some are not entirely paved, but are still fine for most automobiles.

Some winters have very severe weather with more rain than the ground can handle.  Curry County OR sees 101 built on serpentine soil that just loves to move around.  The old Carpenterville routing is so narrow and curvy that moving modern trucks on it is not really viable and it also can be hit with slides.  Del Norte's biggest hazard is the Last Chance grade and unlike kkt's assertions, there is no "easy" alternative.  Why?  The highway is on the side of a damned mountain!  You can go through the mountain (tunnels) or around it with the choices being hard by the ocean or way inland.  Them's your options as a road builder and they're scarce due to the extremely rugged terrain.  Just south of the Del Norte-Humboldt County line, 101 hits its high point on the freeway section and it can be plugged up with snow although the old highway, crooked and narrow as it is, can be used.  Go southerly and the next hazard that can destroy the highway totally is a flooded Eel River, which is one of the few untamed rivers around these days, which has led to this area being referred to as the Wild Rivers Coast from Sixes OR south.  Back in 1964 it went into crazy strong mode and took out a number of bridges on 101. 

With so many possible failure points, anything other than a drought year offers a chance for Murphy's Law to kick in.  ODOT to their credit, finally figured out a way to implement some hill drainage to hold down the chances of 101 sliding away, which it did a few miles south of Port Orford in the last decade.  The one detour possible there is a completely buried in the woods gravel road that only a local would know and it cannot handle any real volume of traffic. let alone the trucks that are counted on to serve rural NorCal and the southern Oregon coast.

Now when one looks at the environmentalists in California with their propensity to sue at the drop of a hat, then combine that with Caltrans' notoriously slow moving bureaucracy, if one believes the odds of a new route being built in 3 years are good, they might want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn...LOL!  Yes, Caltrans did handle the Northridge quake damage quickly but there were not all those anti-progress progressives throwing monkey wrenches into the process, which is something they did plenty of during the building of the Willets Bypass, costing the taxpayers more millions and delaying completion as well.  That won't be the case where some redwoods will need to be chopped down.

Rick

[kkt]

You put "easy" in quotes, but I never used that word or anything like it.  I said "painful".  Caltrans didn't call the alternatives "easy" either.  They came up with a list of possible relocations of which the cheapest was about $200 million.  Now they're narrowing the alternatives and working on funding.

The north coast has difficult geography, always has and always will.  That's why it's been little populated, and many of the people who live there like it being little populated even if that means inconvenience and expense sometimes.

[nexus73]

Take it "easy" kkt...LOL!  Painful is the lay of the land there for sure.  There is a surprising amount of economic activity in Curry/Del Norte.  Brookings OR has two functioning lumber mills, a large fishing fleet and is a regional shopping center with the big draw being no sales tax in Oregon.  Add in medical facilities and government presence bolstered by a large population of relatively well-off retirees.  Over in Del Norte there is a large dairy industry north of Crescent City, the baddest maximum security prison in California (Pelican Bay), yet another large fishing fleet with the accompanying processing plants, plenty of shopping and of course don't forget all the government dollars down there. 

The real strange deal is to see no lumber mills in Del Norte while the dairy industry in Coos/Curry has pretty much evaporated.  What is not strange are the throngs of tourists, who love to come to the cool coast when inland gets so hot.  Between the cities of Brookings and Crescent City there are 4 miles of expressway south of Brookings and 3 miles of freeway north of Crescent City, which leaves 20 miles of two lane road with no passing lanes.  When one combines the local traffic, economic activity traffic and tourist traffic, that section of 101 gets extremely congested.  It would also be helpful to extend 4 laning with a center turn lane two miles north and south of where the 4-lane sections terminate at the end of each city as there are plenty of intersections, businesses and residential areas that further up the demand upon the under-laned sections. 

Once a new section of 101 was built, the grades will in turn require 3-lane treatment as trucks and RV's are not exactly Porsches...LOL!  From that point south, a tiny 4-lane section north of Klamath CA can be the starting point of upgrading the current 2-lane with center turn lane, which in due turn segues into a Super-2 and then becomes the 4-lane freeway that crosses over into Humboldt County.  That would handle what we have going on rather nicely and in a much safer fashion.

Were California not so full of progressives against progress, one could see a future where all the 4-lane sections of 101 get hooked together in either freeway or expressway form.  Tourism is expected to be the largest industry on the planet in the 21st century and given the beauty of rural NorCal and the southern Oregon coast, there will be more of them than ever!  Might as well give them a good road to drive on.

Rick

[NE2]

Fump truck...LOL!