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Author Topic: Headlines about California Highways - January 2018  (Read 2195 times)

cahwyguy

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Headlines about California Highways - January 2018
« on: February 01, 2018, 10:24:17 AM »

Here are the headlines about California Highways for the last month, the first month of a new year. California infrastructure is like a senior citizen these days: we're doing the necessary repairs to stay alive, perhaps getting a little wider, but otherwise not growing that much that is new.

http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=13898

Ready, set, comment.
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Daniel - California Highway Guy ● Highway Site: http://www.cahighways.org/ ●  Blog: http://blog.cahighways.org/ ● Podcast (CA Route by Route): http://caroutebyroute.org/ ● Follow California Highways on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cahighways

Max Rockatansky

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Re: Headlines about California Highways - January 2018
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2018, 11:59:30 PM »

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. 
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pderocco

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Re: Headlines about California Highways - January 2018
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2018, 03:00:22 AM »

Re: CA-180, I notice that at the end of the cahighways.org entry, it says "Additionally, the signed route continued E from the current terminus across the mountain (routing not determined) to Route 7 (US 395) in Independence. That portion of the route doesn't correspond to anything in the state highway system prior to 1934... or even since."

Take a look at this 1941 Auto Club of SoCal map:

http://www.historicalroadmaps.com/CaliforniaPage/DeathValleyPage/image2.html

It shows Onion Valley Road in Independence as route 180! I wonder if it was actually signed. You might want to add that link to the site.

(The map also shows Horseshoe Meadow Road in Lone Pine as 190, although that at least was the plan in the California official maps for many years.)
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Max Rockatansky

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Re: Headlines about California Highways - January 2018
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2018, 08:26:04 AM »

Re: CA-180, I notice that at the end of the cahighways.org entry, it says "Additionally, the signed route continued E from the current terminus across the mountain (routing not determined) to Route 7 (US 395) in Independence. That portion of the route doesn't correspond to anything in the state highway system prior to 1934... or even since."

Take a look at this 1941 Auto Club of SoCal map:

http://www.historicalroadmaps.com/CaliforniaPage/DeathValleyPage/image2.html

It shows Onion Valley Road in Independence as route 180! I wonder if it was actually signed. You might want to add that link to the site.

(The map also shows Horseshoe Meadow Road in Lone Pine as 190, although that at least was the plan in the California official maps for many years.)

In regards to 180 there is a possibility that a crossing the Sierras was explored but it was probably buried by the time General Grant National Park was expanded into Kings Canyon National Park.  Back in the CA 180 thread relating to the east of Fresno I noted that transportation in the area was greatly tied to the logging flume operated out of Hume Lake. 

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=20185.msg2256022#msg2256022

I highly doubt Onion Valley Road was actually signed as a state highway.  I've never seen anything on an a official state map released by the Division of Highways that indicated maintenance of Onion Valley Road.  My assumption is that it was likely explored in a far flung survey at some point.

Horseshoe Meadow Road was definitely state maintained and was for quite a long time.  The plans to have CA 190 cross the Sierras via the Upper Kern River Canyon and Olancha Pass were way more substantial and even appear as planned routes on almost every officially released state highway map.  CA 190 would probably one of the more realistic crossings given that it likely might only briefly exceed 9,000 feet if at all.

There was definitely interest in having a Trans-Sierra Highway on the CA 168 area:

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=21107.msg2258984#msg2258984

With CA 168 before the roads were adopted by the state they were built to a pretty high standard for the time given the hydroelectric projects related to Big Creek.  Likely a crossing would have had to use Kaiser Pass Road and had a summit exceeding 11,000 feet.

Even CA 203 was briefly explored as a Trans-Sierra route via the San Joaquin River:

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=19437.msg2195871#msg2195871
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