Headlines about California Highways - February 2019

[cahwyguy]

As February is a short month, I'll keep this short and sweet: Here are your headlines and other items related to California Highways for the rainy and cold month of February.

https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=15037

Ready, set, discuss.

[TheStranger]

Out of all the articles in that link, this one is the most intriguing: Coronado officials trying to debate the benefits and drawbacks of having Route 75 and Route 282 through their city relinquished from CalTrans maintenance to local control.

http://www.coronadonewsca.com/news/coronado_city_news/councilmembers-donovan-and-sandke-provide-differing-perspectives-to-highway-relinquishment/article_7db38024-36e5-11e9-83b5-1b15c50ed99b.html

[Plutonic Panda]

In the meantime, officials are using $100 million in expected new Bay Area bridge toll money to design the first projects. According to planning documents, the first construction project will be a new roundabout to replace the current traffic signal at Highway 37 and Highway 121 near Sonoma Raceway. The $30 million project should take seven years to complete, according to the documents.

- https://www.petaluma360.com/news/9236578-181/major-fixes-for-addressing-traffic?sba=AAS

Am I reading this correctly? The cost to design these projects will be 100 million or that is the money that the Bay Area tolls will collect? If so they provided no context. What timeframe are they thinking 100 million will be collected? How much will the design cost. Surely it won't be 100 million dollar to design these bridges.

Secondly, it will take 7 years to construct a roundabout?

Then there is this: https://lbpost.com/longbeachize/infrastructure-freeway-expansion-brookings-report-2019/

What a dumb article!

[Max Rockatansky]

Interesting seeing CA 180 being extended to I-5 come up again, locally that project has been in limbo since the early state highway era.  Personally I've found Avenue 7 to Firebaugh and Nees Avenue to be more efficient of a route than the current 180 is.  I'd really love to see a bypass of Mendota and Kerman even it was an expressway. 

[Max Rockatansky]

The whole deal with not building a proper cut due to a salamander on CA 25...laughable:

IMG_8198 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Really the project in my opinion highlights the absurdity of some of the environmental red tape road projects get in California.  It seems silly to hang onto the old alignment with a stop signal when the new alignment could easily be fixed with a larger cut.

IMG_8199 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

[polarscribe]

As is so often the case, the trope that "evil environmentalists" caused the blockage of a road project and "NEPA/CEQA are horrible and evil red tape and should be abolished forever" is... simply not true.

https://benitolink.com/apparently-faulty-engineering-caused-cave-hwy-25-realignment-project

After Caltrans engineers designed the new, flatter, slower turn, the $2.1 million contract went to the lowest bidder, John Madonna and Company, out of San Luis Obispo. The construction company, according to Rosales, followed Caltrans' engineering plan to the letter.

"They did a good job,"  he said. "They performed the work according to the contract plans."

The only problem was, Rosales admitted, those plans were wrong regarding soil conditions, and soon after the road was completed in December 2015, the slopes began to give way and landslides continually blocked the new road.

Caltrans' Rosales admitted the state agency got it wrong from the onset of the project when dirt samples were examined and incorrectly determined to be stable enough for the project.

"The new road is still closed and we're going to be evaluating a long-term fix for that, so we have a restoration project to evaluate and determine what the long-term fix will be,"  Rosales said. When asked how long it might be before the road will open again, he responded, "I would say longer than several months; maybe a year or two, is my guess."

This fiasco has absolutely nothing to do with a salamander and everything to do with bad engineering by CalTrans.

[Max Rockatansky]

That said it seems that Caltrans wants to blame environmental red tape as the reason why the new alignment hasn't been fixed.  In that regard, yes the faulting engineering is the root cause.  But that said, that new alignment from an engineering prospective is an easy fix, just widen the cut.  The only two obstructions at this point are funding, and really a new environmental impact study.  For what its worth I never thought the old alignment was really any more dangerous than any other particular curvy section of CA 25.

[oscar]

After Caltrans engineers designed the new, flatter, slower turn, the $2.1 million contract went to the lowest bidder, John Madonna and Company, out of San Luis Obispo.

If that name sounds familiar ... it should be. John Madonna's parents were Alex and Phyllis Madonna, who established the world-famous Madonna Inn along US 101 in San Luis Obispo (all the rooms have unique themes, and the waterfall urinal in the basement men's room is also pretty amazing -- some women asked me to stand guard while they went in to take a look). Alex Madonna was also locally famous for his construction company, which among other things helped build that stretch of US 101, later named for him.