🛣 Changes to the California Highway Website covering Jan-Feb 2024

[cahwyguy]

The changes to the California Highways website have been made, uploaded, and posted. You can find the change log at https://www.cahighways.org/chg2024.html or https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=16751 . As always, ready, set, discuss.

Highlighting one segment:

Updated the Links pages to reflect the return of ORoads: The Roads of Oregon, and its companion sites the Beaver State Blog and the Beaver State Wiki. Additionally, capture the movement of All Things NC to Gribblenation, and the NCRoads Annex at VA Highways. Added a link to the CSUN Maps library to the Maps page. Added a section to the Maps page about other research tools. Yeah, it doesn't fit with maps, but it doesn't really fit anywhere else either, and the maps are also used for research. Added links to the Caltrans Library Digital Collection, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, and the San Jose Public Library: CA Dept. of Highways (CALTRANS) Right of Way Assessment (h/t kurumi) to the Useful Research Tools page.

Reviewed the Draft 2024 SHOPP, The goal was to identify new projects that would be of interest to the highway pages. Continuing projects should already be in the pages if they are of interest. Note that Caltrans now has a wonderful interactive project page making it easy to find a project. Hmmm, I should probably add that to the front page of the site. * rummages around *. Oh, it's already in the FAQ! Caltrans also has an interactive SHOPP dashboard. I added that to the FAQ, under how Caltrans spends its money. Per the 2024 Draft SHOPP: "The 2024 SHOPP is comprised of a portfolio of 617 projects (197 new and 420 "carryover" projects from the 2022 SHOPP), spanning the four fiscal years 2024-25 through 2027-28. More than half of these projects focus on condition improvements across four primary asset classes (i.e., pavement, bridge, drainage, and Transportation Management Systems) (TMS), supporting Caltrans's progress in meeting the required 2027 performance targets set forth by the Commission and outlined in SB 1." This review resulted in updates to the following routes: Route 1, Route 13, Route 14, Route 49, Route 72, Route 84, US 101, Route 113, Route 120, Route 126, Route 299, US 395.

Added some links for the National Pony Express Trail. This impacted the following routes: Route 24, US 50, I-80, Route 88, Route 89, I-680, I-780.

Made more updates to pages based on podcast research: Route 2, Route 99, Route 138, LRN 59.

Reviewed the Pending Legislation page, based on the California Legislature site, for bills through 2023-12-25. As usual, I recommend to every Californian that they visit the legislative website regularly and see what their legis-critters are doing. As many people are unfamiliar with how the legislature operates (and why there are so many "non-substantive changes" and "gut and amend" bills), I've added the legislative calendar (updated for 2024) to the end of the Pending Legislation page. Mostly, this was new bills being introduced; however, two naming resolutions passed in January:

SCR 59 (Ochoa Bogh) Senator Bob Dutton Memorial Overcrossing.
Designates the overcrossing on State Route 210 at Archibald Avenue (~ SBD 5.889) in the City of Rancho Cucamonga as the "Senator Bob Dutton Memorial Overcrossing".

01/18/24    Chaptered by Secretary of State. Res. Chapter 1, Statutes of 2024.

SCR 74 (Nguyen) Officer Jon Coutchie Memorial Bridge.
Designates the Aliso Creek Bridge, Bridge № 55-0003, on Route 1, in the County of Orange, at post mile 6.49, as the "Officer Jon Coutchie Memorial Bridge".

01/18/24    Chaptered by Secretary of State. Res. Chapter 2, Statutes of 2024.

Reviewed the online agenda of the California Coastal Commission. There was no meeting in January; in February, there were no items of interest for the highway pages.

Folks may ask why I still do my site instead of just moving everything to the AARoads Road Wiki (which just made the news: Gizmodo and Slashdot. The answer is simple. I'm an old fart and don't like change. Well, I like change when I find it in my pockets. But seriously, I don't like being constrained by the Wiki's format, plus I collect a lot more status information than the Wiki would care about, and tend to have a lot more map images.

I'm also still old-school in that I maintain a links page, so if you are aware of highway pages that need to be on the links pages, please let me know. I'd rather get mail from you than the usual spam I get suggesting a link to a driving school.

So, again, "ready, set, discuss".