Just got around to reading to the articles.
- Interesting that US 50 has been shortened as much as it has over the years. It would be kind of neat to see a full summary of what has changed with the route since the 3,073 mile sign went up.
- Interesting water map for the Bay Area. Suffice to say a lot of those surface streets near the water level would be having just as many issues. Oddly reminds of how things were in South Florida.
- If I recall correctly Donner Pass wasn't the only highway in the early 20th century that required a dangerous rail crossing in California. Didn't traffic on the National Trails Highway have to use the railroad bridge over the Colorado River until the Colorado Arch Bridge was complete?....which I believe was in 1916? Reading up on the old Donner Pass road when I was researching the topic is interesting though, its really amazing how really dangerous traveling a car used to be.
- Interestingly the Peterson Museum has a bunch of set pieces on what traffic used to be like in Los Angeles before the freeways. There is no what that city and metro area can function without the current infrastructure, life would ground to a halt.
- There is a massive difference in road quality and standards on CA 127 from San Bernardino versus Inyo County. The San Bernardino side is much more narrow and generally is nothing but soft shoulders. Weird that should improvements are only being considered in much a small part of the roadway, but then again it isn't like 127 gets a ton of traffic anyways.
- That's great news to see that US 66 likely is going to be a designated a National Historic Trail. A lot of effort but a lot of people went into preserving the road and documenting what is still left out there. Really I'd like to see the whole route signed again with "TO" signage on sections that no longer connect. There is a huge opportunity to boost local tourism levels and bring people to some really great places that don't get a lot of attention anymore. I did my own series on US 66 in California which is also on the Headlines, so obviously it is something I'm personally passionate about. I'd really like to get back out there and do the whole route hopefully next year or the year after, now it looks like I might have some extra incentive.
- 46 has been overdue for decades in terms of improvements. I have the entire route on my short list to complete in the next month in my own road blog series...probably coupled with 227 and 166. Really the traffic volume merits an expressway all the way east to 99. I with the articles would get US 466/CA 41 correct though, they always refer to the highway as "46" even though James Dean's accident was in 1955.
- What I thought was interesting about the 1940 Map Adventurenumber 1 posted was that CA 180 is shown west of CA 33 into the Diablo Range. That's the third map from 1940 or before showing the route out there on County Maintained Panoche Road. We know for sure that 12 had a County Maintained section due to a picture NE2 found, but it seems like others like 33, 180, and 49 had sections as well. Odd that the Division of Highways never got around to making 180 a complete route under state maintenance as originally envisioned in the Diablo Range.
- That new round on 68 at 17 Mile Drive works pretty well. I vaguely remember some pretty nasty traffic backups when it was a more conventional configuration.