The Paper Highways north of San Francisco Bay

[Max Rockatansky]

A recent trip to Santa Rosa had me revisiting a lot of map scans of the area which are awash in highways that were planned but never built north of San Francisco Bay.  In something of a departure I wanted to examine each of these routes and see what their closest analogs were.  Specifically the routes covered below are; CA 12 west of Sebastopol, CA 17/CA 251 west of US 101, CA 37 west of US 101, CA 181, and the partially built CA 281.  I found CA 281 to be the most interesting since it has three constructed miles which are surprisingly well signed.

https://www.gribblenation.org/2020/01/the-paper-highways-north-of-san.html

[sparker]

Not surprising re the CA 281 signage -- Lake County is in D1, which tends to buck the Caltrans trend toward ignoring such trivia as posting/maintaining signage.  Connectors and truly secondary routes like CA 253 and CA 271 are markedly well-signed within the district.  D4, which covers most of the Bay Area, isn't half-bad compared with some SoCal districts although they do have their neglectful moments and more than a smidgen of relinquishment fever. 

When I was living in Windsor circa 1990, I often wondered why Caltrans, when they were more inclined to do so, just didn't adopt River Road between Guerneville and us 101 as CA 181; de facto it performed the same function.  Fancifully, I would have even extended it east over Mark West Road to Calistoga -- that, and CA 29/53/20 was my regular way to get to northward I-5 when I lived up there.