🛣️ Changes/Updates to the California Highways Website | April – July 2019

[cahwyguy]

(Normally, I don't put that much of the update text in. This time, there is some significant news. As always, go to the change page at https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=15446 or https://www.cahighways.org/changes.html for all the details, and ... ready, set, discuss.)

What better than Independence Day as the time to start working on the next round of updates. The site redesign is still on the horizon, but I still need to read my Responsive Design book and figure out the design I want. As I've noted before, I have no plans to change the content or my method of content generation. I have settled on my replacement editor for HoTMetaL Pro: BlueGriffon. as it seems to have a good tag manipulation mode. I also plan to use Pinegrow to check the responsive design aspects. and plan to continue to use Amaya as the main editor (even though Amaya seems to be abandonware). You can see my thoughts on what I would like from the redesign here; it also explains how the site is generated. I'll note that I tried to use BlueGriffon for some of this round of update. It introduces some form of HTML error that Amaya has trouble with, so I need to investigate fuller. No one seems to make a clean editor anymore: they all seem to enforce their designer's ideas.

Caltrans Website Rework and Its Impacts

Note: Caltrans and the CTC have updated their websites to a new accessible design, as the result of AB 434, which required all state websites to be accessible. Of course, the state waited to contract it until the last moment, and many of the resources are now broken, awaiting remediation for accessibility. All Caltrans and CTC links should be revisited, as they likely no longer work. I'm reporting broken links as I find them to Caltrans on Twitter where appropriate, and fixing them as a run into them.  In particular, the Caltrans Bridge Log seems to have (temporarily) disappeared. Luckily, Bonnie Kuhn, the Public Information Officer for Mendocino and Lake Counties has provided me copies of the logs for all the districts, and they have been uploaded to my Caltrans Resources page  , together with the following additional resources (Thank you very much, Ms. Kuhn):

• National Bridge Inventory Data: https://bridgereports.com/
• FHWA LTBP Infobridge: https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data
• Democrat and Chronicle Bridge Inspections: https://data.democratandchronicle.com/bridge/california/06/
• Bridgehunter: Historical and Notable Bridges in the US: https://bridgehunter.com/

Also the CTC minutes and liason website are broken, but luckily I found someone at the CTC who was willing to help me in this round of updates. Agenda Item 4.4 from the May 2019 CTC meeting provided more information:

• The Commission's website must be redesigned and rebuilt using the most recently revised version of the State of California's Website Template to ensure the underlying infrastructure is compliant with accessibility standards.
• All content migrated to the Commission's newly redesigned website (documents, images, graphics, videos, etc.) must be converted to meet the accessibility criteria established in AB 434. This complex conversion process is commonly referred to as document remediation.
• The Commission must remove content older than three years from its website, and save it internally to be provided upon request.

This means that if you are looking for older content, you should contact Caltrans or the CTC to get a copy of it. Those of us who run websites should coordinate to make these retrieved resources available to the public, and to relieve the burden on the CTC and Caltrans personnel. I have created a preliminary page to make such information available.

Update Details

Updates were made to the following highways, based on my reading of the papers....

As I noted, visit https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=15446 or https://www.cahighways.org/changes.html for all the details, and ... ready, set, discuss.

[TheStranger]

Thanks for all your hard work especially this month with the CalTrans website changes due to AB434. 

The Route 75 relinquishment appears to be the stretch from the city of Imperial Beach east towards I-5, on the south end of the route.

Route 70 right of way funding - is this related to some sort of Marysville bypass project?

Nice to see that Route 132 expressway project in Modesto (the originally proposed I-5W split) moving along.

[cahwyguy]

Nice to see that Route 132 expressway project in Modesto (the originally proposed I-5W split) moving along.

What's interesting on this (if you go to the Route 132 page where I consolidate everything) is that there is the date of adoption of the original route, and information that they bought a lot of the properties well in advance of this, and were just waiting and waiting and waiting.

[TheStranger]

Nice to see that Route 132 expressway project in Modesto (the originally proposed I-5W split) moving along.

What's interesting on this (if you go to the Route 132 page where I consolidate everything) is that there is the date of adoption of the original route, and information that they bought a lot of the properties well in advance of this, and were just waiting and waiting and waiting.

It sounds like similar has occurred for the Route 84 realignment project (east of 880) in Newark that isn't being pursued at the moment but has full right of way remaining

For that matter, the proposed Terminal Island Freeway right of way from Sepulveda Boulevard northeast to the 405/710 junction is still pretty visible as cleared out on Google aerial views though I don't know when the state sold off the property on that path .

SAMSUNG-SM-G930A

[TheStranger]

A couple of more links on the 132 project in Modesto:

https://www.stateroute132.com/
http://www.stancog.org/

Press release: http://www.stancog.org/pdf/ctc-allocates-132-west-project.pdf

Newest project map, showing a conventional interchange between Route 99 and the initial two-lane expressway Route 132 alignment paralleling Kansas Avenue
https://www.stateroute132.com/uploads/5/4/7/5/54754127/sr-132_pubmtgboards.pdf