Zany Italian terrain-based road features

[index]

US 16A south of Mt. Rushmore has some pretty zany features. 3 helices, including one where a bridge leads directly into a tunnel, plus two bifurcations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFsNLQJ9kLM
The Durango-Mazatlan highway is nuts, both the old and the new one. It has a lot of bridges that lead right into tunnels. I've GSV'd the whole thing and it's really something to behold. It has 115 bridges and 63 tunnels, eight of those bridges being over 890 feet tall.

[NE2]

The old drainage tunnels, now roads, in Guanajuato are pretty cool. Nothing designed as an interchange per se.

[X99]

US 16A south of Mt. Rushmore has some pretty zany features. 3 helices, including one where a bridge leads directly into a tunnel, plus two bifurcations.

The pigtail bridges!

[JKRhodes]

In perhaps the best example I can think of for Arizona, which pales in terms of Zaniness, there's the intersection of State Route 88 and State Route 188 at Government Hill/Roosevelt. The road used to go over the top of the old masonry dam and through tunnels to reach the bottom of the canyon. In its present (post 1992) form, SR 88 winds up the side canyons and around the hill points, nearly touching SR 188 before curving around a point, going over a side canyon, and cutting through another point before it intersects 188 on top of a curved bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/ZRDP1ac6sE8SPSMK6

[empirestate]

In perhaps the best example I can think of for Arizona, which pales in terms of Zaniness, there's the intersection of State Route 88 and State Route 188 at Government Hill/Roosevelt. The road used to go over the top of the old masonry dam and through tunnels to reach the bottom of the canyon. In its present (post 1992) form, SR 88 winds up the side canyons and around the hill points, nearly touching SR 188 before curving around a point, going over a side canyon, and cutting through another point before it intersects 188 on top of a curved bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/ZRDP1ac6sE8SPSMK6

Where were/are those tunnels now?

[JKRhodes]

In perhaps the best example I can think of for Arizona, which pales in terms of Zaniness, there's the intersection of State Route 88 and State Route 188 at Government Hill/Roosevelt. The road used to go over the top of the old masonry dam and through tunnels to reach the bottom of the canyon. In its present (post 1992) form, SR 88 winds up the side canyons and around the hill points, nearly touching SR 188 before curving around a point, going over a side canyon, and cutting through another point before it intersects 188 on top of a curved bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/ZRDP1ac6sE8SPSMK6

Where were/are those tunnels now?

Underneath present-day Apache Trail/SR 88 on one end, at grade with the highway at the other side of the point:
https://goo.gl/maps/ZRDP1ac6sE8SPSMK6
https://goo.gl/maps/cnk8EkQKKNPehS2i7

Although I just realized, it makes more sense that the tunnel would have been built around 1992 along with the raising of the dam, in order to allow SRP access to the top of the dam for maintenance. The apparent age of the doors and concrete support this idea.

[jakeroot]

Judging by the terrain and images of the old dam, it looks like the road over the dam was reached by two bridges that connected to the small, disused trails on either side of the dam (but which don't quite reach the dam), labelled as "Apache Trail" on the southern side, and "Roosevelt Lake Bridge" on the northern side.

The capacity of the dam must have been ridiculously low, based on the images that I'm seeing, and the fact that the road was single-track for what appears to be a very long distance. I hope passing areas were provided!

Edit: image...


(image from Department of the Interior)

[JKRhodes]

Judging by the terrain and images of the old dam, it looks like the road over the dam was reached by two bridges that connected to the small, disused trails on either side of the dam (but which don't quite reach the dam), labelled as "Apache Trail" on the southern side, and "Roosevelt Lake Bridge" on the northern side.

The capacity of the dam must have been ridiculously low, based on the images that I'm seeing, and the fact that the road was single-track for what appears to be a very long distance. I hope passing areas were provided!

Edit: image...


(image from Department of the Interior)

Great find. Thanks for sharing the pic! I'm told that the custom in pre-bridge days was to simply take turns crossing the top of the dam, one vehicle at a time. SR 188 as a whole didn't have nearly the design speed or capacity back then as it does now, and daily traffic counts were much lower.

[empirestate]

Judging by the terrain and images of the old dam, it looks like the road over the dam was reached by two bridges that connected to the small, disused trails on either side of the dam (but which don't quite reach the dam), labelled as "Apache Trail" on the southern side, and "Roosevelt Lake Bridge" on the northern side.

Yup, I can see the old abutment to the bridge on the northern side in this view:
https://goo.gl/maps/dfzKDL5B1Ps84wAa6