California Highway Headlines for July 2017

[cahwyguy]

Here are your headlines about California Highways for July: http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=13191

Ready. Set. Discuss.

[Max Rockatansky]

My two cents on the topics....

-  152 west of Pacheco Pass where it drops down to two-lanes is pretty high up on the list of the most awful state highways still in use.  I would probably take a realignment of 152 to US 101 as a bigger priority than even the Kramer Junction bypass of CA 58.  Usually I take 156 west to 25 just to back track to US 101, it might be way longer but still usually less time.  I've been meaning to try out Fairview and Shore Road as a shortcut to 25, it seems to have heavy truck traffic on it though.

-  In regards to CA 1 in Big Sur, I've already tackled it southbound from G16 in addition to the isolated part via Nacimiento-Fergusson Road this year.  I'm planning on trekking out to the Mud Creek Slide closure in about 10 days and I'll probably be going over the new Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge possibly the day or the week it opens...just a matter of keeping track of the repairs.  I'm to understand that the road north of Limekiln State Park is one-way traffic control at the moment, previously it was only open to locals north of the park when I visited.

-  The roundabout in Plymouth at CA 49 and E16 would fix a junction that tends to get mucked up with traffic.  Currently the configuration is just a four-way stop sign which really holds up traffic in the morning.  I'd like to see a roundabout up in El Dorado as well at 49 and Pleasant Valley Road.

- 99 near Delano really needs that $3.4 million badly, that section is in rough shape in terms of surface quality.  99 near Visalia is in almost just as bad of shape as Delano.  The one I'm not really getting is what Caltrans is working on with 168 near Clovis?...maybe that is the Prather roundabout project?

-  88 on Waterloo Road has been due for improvements for a long time.  The pavement is in rough shape and traffic doesn't flow well at all.  Stockton basically has grown pretty much out onto 88 nowadays.

-  Kind of amazing how much money that slide on CA 299 is really ending up costing.  I'm just glad I made through there a couple months in advance of that slide, that would have been a nightmare to backtrack out of the Trinity Range on 96.

[Plutonic Panda]

Glad to see widening I-15 from Barstow to Primm is at last being talked about.

As for the HDC, I didn't understand that article. It seemed to say phase one was building the 55 mile freeway but then turns around and says rail is phase one even though it states it will cost 9 times what the freeway will cost($8 billion). This corridor needed to be builtt yesterday. I hope finding is found for it.

As for the 710 tunnel gap, I am still hoping it happens. I tend to be overly optimistic on things I want to see happen(call it wishful thinking). I think once they implement all of this bullshit(new Blvd with bike lanes and bus routes which even though could be good projects)--I use the term bullshit as in it won't solve traffic congestion--and see it won't solve what they want to solve, this could come back to light. So wait another ten years.

[sparker]

As for the HDC, I didn't understand that article. It seemed to say phase one was building the 55 mile freeway but then turns around and says rail is phase one even though it states it will cost 9 times what the freeway will cost($8 billion). This corridor needed to be builtt yesterday. I hope finding is found for it.

After reading the article, it's clear that the $8B for the HDC covers the roadway and at least grading for the rail portion.  When I was living in Hesperia several years ago, several iterations of the HDC were posited both in the local media as well as with public meetings (ca. 2010-11); all the plans I saw indicated that the rail and road segments would be built as a single project, with the rail located in the median of the roadway.  Also, most of the alignments intersected I-15 a couple of miles north of Victorville; this was to facilitate the eastward continuation of the project as a CA 18 expressway realignment bypassing Apple Valley to the north (and conveniently passing right next to the major SoCal Wal-Mart distribution hub).  Local sentiment toward the corridor was decidedly mixed -- some locals wondered why so much money was to be spent on improving access to the Palmdale/Lancaster area, when there was little commercial or commuter traffic between the two high-desert centers.  Longtime self-described resident "desert rats" were the most skeptical of the project (due to both their perception of relative isolation as a desirable condition as well as a high degree of ideological conservatism); newer transplants to the area were more welcoming to the additional chance for connectivity. 

Several corridor routings were forwarded; some essentially followed CA 138 and CA 18, while others (which were clearly favored by the MPO officials from both Palmdale/Lancaster and the Victorville area) extended due west from Adelanto, passing Lake Los Angeles, and intersecting CA 14 near the old Lockheed "skunk works" north of central Palmdale.  This more northerly corridor was significantly flatter than the CA 138 route (which was up on the north alluvial slope of the San Gabriel mountains) and thus more conducive to rail construction and operation. 

It's pretty clear that the $8B figure cited pertains specifically to the initial phase of the HDC, which would see the road portion built out fully and the median-sited rail graded so as to be able to accommodate any rail configuration -- once that was determined.  The "9 times" (or $72M) refers to the N-S main HSR line passing through Palmdale/Lancaster parallel to CA 14.     

[Plutonic Panda]

Okay thank you for the clarification on that. Hopefully they can find funding for this as it already is receiving some money from Measure M and I believe R. With SB-1, maybe Caltrans can free up some funds to expedite this and the CA-138 project. I would love to see the SoCal deserts get some love. It sure would help too whenever I-15 or I-5 is shutdown due to a fire.

[sparker]

Okay thank you for the clarification on that. Hopefully they can find funding for this as it already is receiving some money from Measure M and I believe R. With SB-1, maybe Caltrans can free up some funds to expedite this and the CA-138 project. I would love to see the SoCal deserts get some love. It sure would help too whenever I-15 or I-5 is shutdown due to a fire.

CA 138 itself is being upgraded -- principally as a 5-lane arterial -- along much of its length in Los Angeles County; it still shrinks down to a single lane per direction through Littlerock, however.  But that series of projects ends at the CA 138/18 split just before the San Bernardino county line; both roads east of there remain 2-lane rural facilities.  The HDC is, at least to the planning agencies in the area with whom I've conversed several times, considered as a completely separate project from the 138 corridor improvements; the notion of a freeway along 138 (the old Metro Bypass concept) was dropped decades ago in favor of the series of improvements that have been occurring since the early '90's; these improvements have been touted as more toward safety (138 is widely considered to be one of, if not the most dangerous non-freeway corridor in Southern California) than capacity.  While trucks do make up a large portion of the traffic on this corridor, most of those are simply using it to avoid L.A. Basin congestion en route to the Inland Empire or points south and east of there; the outsized growth of the I.E. over the past 30 years has made the concept of a bypass intersecting I-15 south of Cajon Pass more or less a moot point; it would just add even more traffic to the already hyper-congested mix!