Trips made much longer by geographical constraints

Started by ipeters61, February 13, 2019, 10:30:37 PM

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Ben114

Quote from: Takumi on February 14, 2019, 08:10:50 PM
Anywhere where a bridge has been closed or demolished.
Also known as mile down the street from my house.


Beltway

Many trip pairs around Chesapeake Bay.

One example, St. Michaels (parents' residence) on the Eastern Shore to Chesapeake Beach on the western shore.

As the crow flies -- 18.1 miles

By road (MD-33, US-50, MD-2, MD-260) -- 75.7 miles
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RobbieL2415

Does Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE count? Theoretically a bridge-tunnel could be built but the NIMBYS say no.

nexus73

Coos Bay to Roseburg is 100 miles by road and about 45 in a straight line.  There is a close to straight line road between the two areas but it is a stagecoach routing built around 1880.  It has gravel sections, lots of curves and the Coast Range to deal with but since this is the 21st century. overcoming these obstacles is not a big deal in terms of engineering.

Why was the route not developed when the automobile became prominent in the early 20th century?  Because the towns that came along after the stagecoach route was pushed through set themselves up along the Coquille River.  That led to the highway connecting them since no population centers ever came into being along the stagecoach route. 

After WWII, the Port Of Coos Bay was this planet's largest wood products shipping port.  Logs, lumber and wood chips flowed out of here like oil.  Roseburg and the surrounding environs was home to a large complex of mills that needed access to the port.  With so much truck traffic being forced onto a very crooked narrow SR 42, that was the time to build a new highway along the stagecoach route.  This was discussed but never done.

Today a drive to Roseburg and I-5 takes 2 hours.  Had a freeway been built between the two cities on the straightest possible path, one could zoom along at 65 MPH and thus reduce the time to 40 minutes max.  Imagine how much more productive trucking would be.  Imagine how many more tourists would come with a fine road to bring them to the coast.  Imagine what the elevated prosperity from a properly placed and built freeway would have brought to our area.

Add in being able to go to Eugene in 100 minutes instead of 130.  Grants Pass would have turned from a 3 hour drive minimum to one of 100 minutes, with Medford just 30 more minutes away. 

What could have been.  Sigh.

Rick
US 101 is THE backbone of the Pacific coast from Bandon OR to Willits CA.  Industry, tourism and local traffic would be gone or severely crippled without it being in functioning condition in BOTH states.

ipeters61

Quote from: RobbieL2415 on February 14, 2019, 09:41:27 PM
Does Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE count? Theoretically a bridge-tunnel could be built but the NIMBYS say no.
I wasn't really thinking of routes where ferries are available (I was thinking that there can't be any means using a public "road"/ferry/bridge/tunnel directly linking the two locations).

Quote from: Beltway on February 14, 2019, 09:12:02 PM
Many trip pairs around Chesapeake Bay.

One example, St. Michaels (parents' residence) on the Eastern Shore to Chesapeake Beach on the western shore.

As the crow flies -- 18.1 miles

By road (MD-33, US-50, MD-2, MD-260) -- 75.7 miles

A bad example is how long it takes me to get to Baltimore from Dover.  It's a 59 mile route heading west-northwest directly, but the actual route is 94 miles (via the Bay Bridge) and involves heading south by about 15 miles.

I just checked a place closer to Baltimore on the Eastern Shore (Tolchester Beach to Sparrow Point).  11.4 miles direct, 81 miles by road (and involves heading south by 16 miles).
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Beltway

Quote from: ipeters61 on February 14, 2019, 10:02:06 PM
I just checked a place closer to Baltimore on the Eastern Shore (Tolchester Beach to Sparrow Point).  11.4 miles direct, 81 miles by road (and involves heading south by 16 miles).

Basically the route of the northern bay bridge that was proposed in the 1930s and in the 1960s.

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jeffandnicole

Quote from: RobbieL2415 on February 14, 2019, 09:41:27 PM
Does Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE count? Theoretically a bridge-tunnel could be built but the NIMBYS say no.

Actually, a crossing has never has truly been proposed for anyone to say No to in the first place.

Beltway

Quote from: jeffandnicole on February 14, 2019, 10:30:08 PM
Quote from: RobbieL2415 on February 14, 2019, 09:41:27 PM
Does Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE count? Theoretically a bridge-tunnel could be built but the NIMBYS say no.
Actually, a crossing has never has truly been proposed for anyone to say No to in the first place.

There were some official discussions about such a bridge in the 1970s around the time of casino gambling being authorized in New Jersey.   I wonder if an engineering feasibility study was compiled.
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Tonytone

Quote from: Beltway on February 14, 2019, 11:36:20 PM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on February 14, 2019, 10:30:08 PM
Quote from: RobbieL2415 on February 14, 2019, 09:41:27 PM
Does Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE count? Theoretically a bridge-tunnel could be built but the NIMBYS say no.
Actually, a crossing has never has truly been proposed for anyone to say No to in the first place.

There were some official discussions about such a bridge in the 1970s around the time of casino gambling being authorized in New Jersey.   I wonder if an engineering feasibility study was compiled.
Beltway, didn't you tell us about the facts in another Topic I made years ago?


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english si

Quote from: ipeters61 on February 14, 2019, 08:12:40 AM"Planned community"
Planned "communities". There's multiple unconnected ones there, and I think they were designed with deliberate fragmentation even within them - seems Avalon Lakes is a few small neighbourhoods within the development, creating some small potential communities that then have little to do with each other. And the west side of that gap is even branded as loads of little bits - Northwood (which is just Anna Catherine Drive, a loop off, and some wetlands), Kensington at Eastwood, Shoal Point, another one whose name isn't on OSM. And we've not got as far west as the roundabout on Golfway Blvd yet! At least that side has the golf cart tracks as alternatives to the single road, but they only offer a twisty long way around (in the main) and not enough little pathway connections between it and the various little ends that get close, to be of any use.
Quote from: froggie on February 14, 2019, 12:41:11 PMThis was one of the longer examples, but suburban development is rife with similar situations.  What suburbanites don't realize (or don't care about) is that such a lack of a street grid and limited ingress/egress actually increases traffic and the distances they need to drive.
But nearer the end of the cul-de-sacs, you don't see hardly any traffic as it's just the traffic for a small number of houses - it's only the wannabe posh people living near the top of the lengthy cul-de-sac that see additional traffic. And designs like this with long distributor roads through the estate that have no/few houses on minimise that. These private estates really are exclusive.  :-P

Where these ones fail massively is a lack of walkability (ie paths that make it a quasi-grid for walking or walking and cycling - or, given where we are, how about golf carts). But it is Central Florida, and who walks there? Seriously - it's like its taboo to walk somewhere (walking pointlessly for exercise is allowed early morning, but don't let it be to do an errand at the same time), especially if rich...

kurumi

Silly example: driving from NYC to SF is 2,902 miles, but "as the crow burrows through the earth" is 2,523 miles: https://planetcalc.com/7725/

What's cool about these notional "gravity trains": if entirely friction-free, they would use no energy -- and any trip would take about 42 minutes, regardless of distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train
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abefroman329

Quote from: kurumi on February 15, 2019, 11:36:51 AM
Silly example: driving from NYC to SF is 2,902 miles, but "as the crow burrows through the earth" is 2,523 miles: https://planetcalc.com/7725/

What's cool about these notional "gravity trains": if entirely friction-free, they would use no energy -- and any trip would take about 42 minutes, regardless of distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train
What a beautiful world this would be/What a glorious time to be free

Mark68

San Gabriel Canyon

4.2 miles (7 minutes) on closed CA 39, 84.4 miles (1 hr 58 mins) detouring around the closure.

https://goo.gl/maps/qgnDvDRZ86N2
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."~Yogi Berra

Hot Rod Hootenanny

Grand Isle, La to Port Sulphur, La - 24 1/2 miles as the crow flies. 145 miles by car.
(Actually any east-west travel, south of US 90 (and I'll say east of Morgan City), in Louisiana, will require going way out of the way, unless you own an air-boat)
Please, don't sue Alex & Andy over what I wrote above

sparker

That's an easy one:  anywhere in the Bay Area to Las Vegas (and back, of course).  S.O.P. involves CA 58 and I-15.  This is one NV problem that an extended I-11 won't even come close to solving.  Of course, the culprit was, is, and likely will always be the Sierras, compounded by the White Mountains, Death Valley (actually the ranges around its perimeter), and even Mt. Charleston.  Absent the absurd original "I-66" proposal from the '80's that was to run along the Sequoia/Kings Canyon delineation line (or under it!), there's little chance any of this will change in the foreseeable future; we'll be schlepping through Barstow if we want to commit acts that are dubious secrets best kept in Vegas!

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: sparker on February 16, 2019, 01:48:04 AM
That's an easy one:  anywhere in the Bay Area to Las Vegas (and back, of course).  S.O.P. involves CA 58 and I-15.  This is one NV problem that an extended I-11 won't even come close to solving.  Of course, the culprit was, is, and likely will always be the Sierras, compounded by the White Mountains, Death Valley (actually the ranges around its perimeter), and even Mt. Charleston.  Absent the absurd original "I-66" proposal from the '80's that was to run along the Sequoia/Kings Canyon delineation line (or under it!), there's little chance any of this will change in the foreseeable future; we'll be schlepping through Barstow if we want to commit acts that are dubious secrets best kept in Vegas!

WTH is that real?  If anyone was serious about building an Interstate through Sequoia National Park it should have been well to the south of the Great Western near the CA 190 corridor where the terrain is infinitely more workable.  I'd love to see any proposal documents showing that I-66 corridor if you know of any. 

jp the roadgeek

Watch Hill, RI to Orient Point, NY

22.78 miles as the crow flies
40 miles by ferry from New London, CT
228 miles if you skip the ferry
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Flint1979

Northport, MI in the Leelanau Peninsula to Escanaba, MI is 83 miles across the water but 277 miles to drive it.

Flint1979

Another one using Northport, Michigan.

Northport to Eastport, MI across the Grand Traverse Bay is 13 miles but 61 miles to drive it.

MantyMadTown

Going anywhere on the Door Peninsula to the UP.
For example, Ellison Bay, WI to Cedar River, MI
17.5 mi as the crow flies, but 159 mi (2 hr 48 min) driving distance

And Washington Island to Fairport, MI
20.5 mi as the crow flies, but 265 mi (5 hr 24 min) driving distance, including the ferry from Washington Island to the rest of the Door Peninsula
Forget the I-41 haters

sparker

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on February 16, 2019, 09:50:33 AM
Quote from: sparker on February 16, 2019, 01:48:04 AM
That's an easy one:  anywhere in the Bay Area to Las Vegas (and back, of course).  S.O.P. involves CA 58 and I-15.  This is one NV problem that an extended I-11 won't even come close to solving.  Of course, the culprit was, is, and likely will always be the Sierras, compounded by the White Mountains, Death Valley (actually the ranges around its perimeter), and even Mt. Charleston.  Absent the absurd original "I-66" proposal from the '80's that was to run along the Sequoia/Kings Canyon delineation line (or under it!), there's little chance any of this will change in the foreseeable future; we'll be schlepping through Barstow if we want to commit acts that are dubious secrets best kept in Vegas!

WTH is that real?  If anyone was serious about building an Interstate through Sequoia National Park it should have been well to the south of the Great Western near the CA 190 corridor where the terrain is infinitely more workable.  I'd love to see any proposal documents showing that I-66 corridor if you know of any. 

The CA segment of that planned corridor (circa 1987 or so) was cobbled up by some of your local Fresno "boosters"; the notion of straddling the line between the two NP's, as ridiculous as it sounds in retrospect, was apparently considered within the realm of feasibility at the time.  I actually saw a map of the full proposal back around 1997 on an old GeoCities site; it hit 395 around Independence, followed it down to Lone Pine, then east on 136 and 190 before heading east via Pahrump and NV 160 to LV.  That was the western end of the infamous corridor that also straddled much of the AZ/UT state line, crossing over it looking like a sine wave pattern on an oscilloscope -- down into AZ along AZ 98, back up into Utah through Monument Valley, back through the Four Corners, and then shooting east along us 160 all the way to I-25, then east via CO 10 to La Junta, and finally exiting CO following the US 400 corridor; the remainder across the country was later taken up by HPC #3 across MO and southern KY, but the promoters never really specified anything east of that state.   Some speculate it would have used corridors "G" and "H" to access the current west end of I-66 before following that route into D.C.; others posited a route similar to the east end of the Coalfields Expressway before merging onto I-64.  The highly improbable route from CO west was, simply put, intended to string together a route that would appeal to tourists.  One one of my cross-country trips back about '91 I attempted to follow the corridor from LV east to at least I-25 -- but once in SW CO, I thought better of traipsing through SE CO on surface roads and made a beeline for Santa Fe; didn't see anything of particular interest east of US 84.

If any of the old proposal documents can be retrieved -- and Fresno's not the only culprit in the mix; a group of Wichita business boosters cobbled up the KS and MO sections, so there might be some residual info floating around there as well -- it would be something of a hoot to start a thread in General about this proposal, which certainly crosses regional lines.  But online info might be hard to come by after 32 years; I'll see if anything's out there (I wouldn't be surprised if the Fresno Chamber of Commerce would have some old files stashed somewhere) and readily available.  Might take some digging, since the old web host for the info I perused back when is long gone.  In hindsight, I should have downloaded and printed copies -- but I had a lot on my plate back then, and it just didn't happen.  Coulda, woulda, shoulda; we've probably all been there!

1995hoo

The drive around Kauai from the northwest corner at Ke'e Beach to the point on the island the furthest distance away by road from there (a spot near the Pu'u O Kila Lookout in Koke'e State Park), using the end of the road in each case as the measuring point, is an 80.7-mile drive that takes around two and a half hours. There is no easy option to walk this via a direct route due to the cliffs above the Kalalau Valley, but if you were to walk the Kalalau Trail down the Na Pali Coast to the Kalalau Valley, it's about an 8.6-mile hike to the beach at the foot of the valley. So figure the impassable terrain means you drive about 81 miles to go between two points that are around nine miles away from each other.
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polarscribe

Quote from: sparker on February 17, 2019, 02:19:55 AM
The CA segment of that planned corridor (circa 1987 or so) was cobbled up by some of your local Fresno "boosters"; the notion of straddling the line between the two NP's, as ridiculous as it sounds in retrospect, was apparently considered within the realm of feasibility at the time. 
I'm not sure what they thought "straddling the line" was going to get them in terms of... what, reducing opposition from environmental groups? There isn't even a "line" anywhere except maps - the two parks are managed as a single unit and there is no "gap" of non-park land where you could theoretically build a road not in the park, much less a freeway.

oscar

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 17, 2019, 03:17:53 PM
The drive around Kauai from the northwest corner at Ke'e Beach to the point on the island the furthest distance away by road from there (a spot near the Pu'u O Kila Lookout in Koke'e State Park), using the end of the road in each case as the measuring point, is an 80.7-mile drive that takes around two and a half hours. There is no easy option to walk this via a direct route due to the cliffs above the Kalalau Valley, but if you were to walk the Kalalau Trail down the Na Pali Coast to the Kalalau Valley, it's about an 8.6-mile hike to the beach at the foot of the valley. So figure the impassable terrain means you drive about 81 miles to go between two points that are around nine miles away from each other.

There was an attempt in the 1950s to build a shortcut, from the end of what is now HI 550 to what is now HI 560. The challenging part was not the mountainous terrain, but a unique high-altitude swamp (high enough to be mosquito-free!), that had to be protected even in the "pave the earth" era. Road crews pushed ahead, but when the bulldozers got stuck in the swamp (I understand some of them are still there), cooler heads prevailed and the project was called off.

See http://www.hawaiihighways.com/FAQs-page6.htm#Kauai-gap for more details, including a map of the proposed road.

There's roughly similar situations on the Big Island and Oahu. In the northwestern corner of the Big Island, HI 240 and HI 270 dead-end at opposite ends of the Waipio Valley, though there is a very steep (25% grade) and narrow 4x4 road from HI 240 to the valley floor. On the opposite side of the island, lava flows severed the connection between HI 130 in Kalapana and Chain of Craters Rd. in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Last year, a one-lane emergency escape route was bulldozed through the lava, after new lava flows threatened to close the other escape routes from the coast southeast of Hilo. That road can be hiked (nothing much to see, now that lava has stopped flowing into the ocean in that area), but is emergency-only for motor vehicles.

On Oahu, there used to be a driveable road between what is now HI 93 on the west coast, and HI 930 on the north shore. Hawaii DOT even unsuccessfully proposed a new Interstate along that route, when it became a state and became eligible for Interstate mileage. Now the old roadbed is blocked by landslides, and barricades to guard a new nature preserve on Kaena Point. I've hiked to the point from both HI 93 and HI 930. There is an alternate shortcut over Kolekole Pass, through an ammunition depot, that might be open to froggie and others with military IDs but otherwise is rarely open to civilians. Otherwise, to get to HI 93 from HI 930, you have to detour over HI 99, and Interstates H-1 and H-2.
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