Recent posts

#1

Southeast / Re: Interstate 73/74

Last post by kendallhart808 - Today at 04:22:46 PM

I would have numbered it Interstate 474, but NC 192 it will be. This will be the second NC 192, as the designation hasn't been used since 1937: http://www.vahighways.com/ncannex/route-log/nc192.html.

I've long been a fan of numbering it I-740 because it's both I-40 and I-74 in one number, but I'm not sure we'll ever get it.

#2

Pacific Southwest / Re: 580 is unconstructed from ...

Last post by gonealookin - Today at 04:18:35 PM

The US 50 freeway project within the Tahoe Basin that would have made sense, many years ago, would have been the Meyers to Stateline bypass.  It would have bypassed the main commercial corridor which is several miles of the current US 50 through the City of South Lake Tahoe, running through the forest from the small town of Meyers, at the eastern foot of Echo Summit, just into Nevada, passing the Heavenly ski area's California lodge and connecting to the major casinos at Stateline.  More or less along the alignment of the current Pioneer Trail, an El Dorado County road.  That alignment would not have impacted any particularly scenic area.



That proposal was floated around the 1960s, at the same time some similar freeway bypasses of smaller towns were being constructed in California (for example, SR 29 around Lakeport and SR 20/49 through the Grass Valley/Nevada City area).  I'm not certain whether there was a formal freeway route adoption for Meyers-Stateline.  It couldn't be built now because there has been too much residential development along that alignment.  Two-lane Pioneer Trail does exist and serves the bypass function as it avoids that often very congested in-town stretch of US 50, but as a moderately high speed road through residential areas including a school zone it's less than ideal.

Heck, nowadays we can't even get a short surface street bypass of the immediate Casino Corridor right at the state line.  I have lived here for 15 years and that "Loop Road" issue just goes endlessly in circles with zero progress.

#3

General Highway Talk / Re: Why is the Shield So Large...

Last post by LilianaUwU - Today at 04:05:44 PM

Large print edition for snowbirds?

Judging from my experienve with people who go to Florida in the winter, that has to be it.

#4

Northeast / Re: Connecticut News

Last post by MikeCL - Today at 03:48:02 PM

Camera has been taken down but they have older still's you can view.

#5

Mid-South / Re: Laredo: bids opened for SH...

Last post by The Ghostbuster - Today at 03:18:55 PM

Could this roadway eventually be extended west of FM 1472 and into Mexico?

#6

Mid-South / Re: Laredo: bids opened for SH...

Last post by Chris - Today at 03:11:16 PM

$100 million plus? For a pair of frontage road streets that run 6 or 7 miles? Jeez.

It does include several sets of bridges, according to the EA. But not an interchange with I-35, it just dead-ends at the I-35 frontage road.

#7

Pacific Southwest / Re: 580 is unconstructed from ...

Last post by Plutonic Panda - Today at 03:10:20 PM

89 had an entire freeway corridor alignment adopted by the CHC along western Lake Tahoe. 

So this bridge would have been part of a freeway corridor then?

Yes.

Wow that would've been some freeway if it had actually been built. As much as I love freeways and bridges I'm glad this one didn't get built. Lake Tahoe is extremely pristine and beautiful.

If anything since we're in fantasy land a LRT would be better. I'd certainly utilize it.

#8

Pacific Southwest / Re: 580 is unconstructed from ...

Last post by Max Rockatansky - Today at 03:00:24 PM

89 had an entire freeway corridor alignment adopted by the CHC along western Lake Tahoe. 

So this bridge would have been part of a freeway corridor then?

Yes.

#9

Pacific Southwest / Re: 580 is unconstructed from ...

Last post by Plutonic Panda - Today at 02:52:37 PM

89 had an entire freeway corridor alignment adopted by the CHC along western Lake Tahoe. 

So this bridge would have been part of a freeway corridor then?

#10

Off-Topic / Re: Mortgage Payments should b...

Last post by SEWIGuy - Today at 02:46:41 PM

This notion of indexing mortgage payments based on assessed value is nuts. It sounds as bad or maybe even worse than signing up for an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM). Anyone would have to be eating stupid pills by the fist full if they wanted to finance a home with a ARM and actually live in the home for any long term amount of time (as opposed to renovating and flipping the thing).

The nice thing about a traditional 30 year fixed rate mortgage is the payments get easier to make through the years due to dollar inflation and one's own earnings increases. Hopefully those gains aren't offset by onerous hikes in property taxes.

For all the schemes going on to game the residential real estate market, a bunch of this crap can go on for only so much longer. The US is in a very absurd housing price bubble. Some market experts are trying to insist this is the new normal, but it is mathematically NOT sustainable. 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending. When you have low income and middle income people spending 50%, 60% or 70% of their incomes on mortgage payments or rent it leaves very little money left over to buy stuff. Some warning signs are already present with certain dollar store chains failing and companies like McDonald's reporting serious downturns in customer traffic. That economic rot happening at the bottom always has a nasty way of working itself upward.

With the US residential real estate market currently being used as an investors playground it's possible for this bad math situation in home mortgage/rent prices to continue for years to come. But it's just going to delay consequences that will be far worse and inflict economic pain that will last for many years. These investors and policy makers have created conditions ripe for the United States to have an utter collapse of fertility rates and just crater our nation's future demographics. In the US only 25% of adults aged 30 and younger have 1 or more children. That number was 60% back in the 1990's. The decline can get a lot worse. Tens of millions of young adults are being priced out of parenthood. America's divorce rate is falling, but that's only because fewer people are getting married.

What do falling birth rates and demographic decline have to do with this topic? Every person who buys a home has the thought in his head that he'll be able to sell it and sell it for a profit sometime in the distant future. What are these home owners and investors going to do when they don't have any buyers?

I don't live in a high income city, but all the new homes getting built here on the far East and West sides of Lawton are big homes for people with six figure incomes. Nearly all the buyers are middle-age and retired-age people. 20 years from now those same homes might be sitting empty. What would a single unmarried person with no kids need with a 3000 square foot McMansion that comes with 3000 square foot utility bills and 3000 square foot property taxes? We have a massive shortage of small houses for single people or couples without kids. And it's hard to build those kinds of houses anywhere thanks to zoning politics. That's yet another thing that's eventually going to kill a generation worth of home ownership and make our emerging baby bust all that much worse.

Birthrate declines will be more than made up by net immigration.