🛣 Headlines About California Highways – August 2021

[cahwyguy]

Don't worry. The promised updates to the California Highways pages are coming. Now that this headline post is out and incorporated, all that remains is reviewing this forum for nuggets of useful information amid all the chaff and fluff.

Here's some of the introduction of this post:

This post was delayed a bit because I was on vacation in Las Vegas. I plan to do some posts [on my blog, not here] about that: one looking at the subtle racism that is still present in the town that once you see, you can't unsee. The other looking at how the town – and the roads – have changed. We all wax rhapsodic about "Classic"  Vegas, but classic vegas is no more. There are no headliners like the headliners of old, there are no lounges or showrooms like the ones of old, there are no hotels like the hotels of old, there are no signs like the signs of old. There are glimmers, fleeting, of the past. But was the past better? Is today's Vegas better? You'll have to read my upcoming posts to know.

One thing the trip to Vegas makes clear is that change is here to stay (unless you are exchanging it for a gambling voucher or playing Pinball at the Pinball Hall of Fame). The days of driving US 91 to Vegas, seeing the signs for the hotels and for Foxy's Deli are gone. Stuckey's is only a memory. The roads are crowded, and filled with people trying to get there an extra five minutes earlier. The headlines this month capture the change.

One other thing the end of summer will bring us is another round of highway page updates. They are almost done, and these headlines will be included in that update. So watch this space. After the headlines are posted, all that will remain is reviewing the AARoads Pacific Southwest forum for updates. As always, if you see a naming sign in the wild (i.e., a sign with the name of a highway) and I don't have a picture of that sign in the NAMING section for the route, please send me the photo. Your name will be immortalized as a contributor.

And lastly, all together now: "Ready, set, discuss" .

Here's the link to the headline post: 👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼 https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=16129 👈🏼👈🏼👈🏼👈🏼

Expect the updates to be complete sometime in the next week, laptop battery permitting (it's working fine, but it is starting to swell and replacement appts are scheduled).

Daniel

[Max Rockatansky]

I didn't widely post it on Gribblenation but given you are working on updates check out the OR 273 blog.  I added in some materials for the Hornbrook-State Line corridor of US 99.

[cahwyguy]

I didn't widely post it on Gribblenation but given you are working on updates check out the OR 273 blog.  I added in some materials for the Hornbrook-State Line corridor of US 99.

I don't see it in the Gribblenation RSS feed, so if you can provide a pointer, it would be appreciated.

[Max Rockatansky]

I didn't widely post it on Gribblenation but given you are working on updates check out the OR 273 blog.  I added in some materials for the Hornbrook-State Line corridor of US 99.

I don't see it in the Gribblenation RSS feed, so if you can provide a pointer, it would be appreciated.

Haven't posted it yet given I didn't want to trample over the Cottonwood blog:

https://www.gribblenation.org/2020/12/oregon-route-273-early-us-route-99-over.html?m=1

[cahwyguy]

I didn't widely post it on Gribblenation but given you are working on updates check out the OR 273 blog.  I added in some materials for the Hornbrook-State Line corridor of US 99.

I don't see it in the Gribblenation RSS feed, so if you can provide a pointer, it would be appreciated.

Haven't posted it yet given I didn't want to trample over the Cottonwood blog:

https://www.gribblenation.org/2020/12/oregon-route-273-early-us-route-99-over.html?m=1

I wonder if that's where the Agricultural Inspector and the Witch are? Give a listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7tlENmmMk

[cahwyguy]

Psst. I won't tell anyone else until tomorrow, but the changes to my site are live, and you can see the change log at https://www.cahighways.org/chg2021.html

Daniel

[Max Rockatansky]

Regarding the "two lane death trap"  segment of CA 41 I'm struck with a sense of amused irony.  I drive said segment fairly regularly given I live around Fresno.  I always found it to be substandard given it was two lanes but nothing too dangerous aside from a foggy winter morning.  The K-Rail installation kind of interesting given I tend to be of the opinion that other two lane highways like CA 156 and CA 152 are far more dangerous.  I didn't want to throw a subjective opinion in the blog I wrote, but that's my two cents for what it's worth.  Either way, it ought to be widened. 

Having Great Highway open to automotive traffic on weekdays seems like a reasonable compromise.  It was way too handy as a through Route for commuters and was causing issues from everything I read when it was closed. 

[sparker]

(......resume rant about something I've ranted about previously):  Despite the issues that have emerged from the deployment of roundabouts on heavily-traveled truck routes, Caltrans (and D5 within) has continued to plan -- and with SB 1, has the funding for -- a roundabout at the intersection of CA 25 and CA 156 NW of Hollister.  But this time they're planning a "turbo roundabout", which is intended to reduce the conflict points of a conventional roundabout by adding barriers and physical channelization.  But the design of that necessitates favoring one of the routes traversing said roundabout by providing outer-ring semi-direct connectivity for the "primary" route -- i.e., the one featuring substantial truck traffic.  But while that may provide some measure of relief to traffic on, ostensibly, CA 156 (which funnels truck traffic from the San Joaquin Valley to the Monterey Peninsula), in the process it shifts the congestion points to CA 25 traffic by requiring it to cross the CA 156 through traffic -- twice -- and use the inner part of the roundabout circle.  If CA 25 were the lightly trafficked rural route it was in previous decades, that concept might have been marginally acceptable -- but it isn't; for several hours in the morning and late afternoon hours 25 is filled up with commuter traffic to and from Hollister to Gilroy, Morgan Hill, and the San Jose area.  The roundabout, regardless of variant format, is a nightmare waiting to happen -- I'll go out on a limb and predict that within a year of opening D5 will re-signalize the roundabout (it's now a signalized/channelized conventional intersection), making the entire project an exercise in pointlessness! 

I've emailed D5 several times regarding these issues when the project posited a convention roundabout, starting about 2018, but have yet to receive a reply or even acknowledgement.  But it appears that roundabouts are now agency SOP as replacements for signalized intersections, particularly at SH junctions.  I'm speculating that the phenomenon is a consequence of urban theory creeping into road planning at all levels -- including the implied mandate that measures to slow down traffic on streets and surface roads should be implemented as general policy -- and roundabouts generally have that effect.  I don't oppose roundabouts for low-speed and more urban settings; but question their use as a default configuration regardless of the working environment. 

I just wonder how many T-bone collisions will have to occur before a general "rethink" happens.  We've already had the instances of folks running into the structures in the centers of these things with fatal results -- but so far that doesn't seem to have fazed those planners who insist on working from "policy/concept-out" rather than "reality-in" POV's.