Road Problems your city or state will never likely fix

[Plutonic Panda]

101 from Cahuenga Pass to downtown. That road needs to be double or triple stacked. I've been caught in bumper to bumper traffic at 11PM on a SUNDAY. No wrecks, no construction, just complete lack of capacity and horrible design. Same goes for the 110 through downtown LA.

I'm also wondering if I-5 from 134 through the East LA interchange widened. Unlikely but seems somewhat probable given California's initiative to improve I-5 through SoCal.

I also wonder if TxDOT will ever widen the Central Expressway again.

[TheStranger]

2.  US 101 Salinas-Gilroy.  Might get upgraded as far south as San Juan Bautista/CA 156 north junction, especially if some activity toward a CA 152 and/or CA 25 set of upgrades actually materializes.  Past that, another D4/D5 joint "band-aid" would likely be administered.  Those two districts seem to cringe at deploying anything that could be seen as capacity increases by automotive transportation critics, so actually bringing US 101 up to full and continuous freeway standards down to Salinas is at best a long shot.

It's crazy to think that the Prunedale bypass was still an active proposal at the time the AARoads forums started, and now has essentially been permanently shelved in favor of the spot upgrades to 101/156 through there (which don't really address the road geometry or capacity but at least provided much more in the way of grade separation than in the past).

I saw you and DTComposer mention 262 in the thread, I wonder how far the current proposals for that route will go - especially when a few miles from there is the canceled north-south 238 freeway segment!

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Now thinking out loud about things that will never get built or fixed here that haven't yet been mentioned:

- it's still a pipe dream for Dianne Feinstein but overall the Southern Crossing has been discussed in some form since the early 1940s without being built, even though the Bay Bridge has been asked to carry more of the SF/Peninsula-East Bay commute load that it ever was intended to in all that time.  One could argue that the switch to five-lanes-per-deck in the 1960s was a band-aid.

- the aforementioned north-south 238, which would have turned the north-south 680-Mission Boulevard-Macarthur Freeway corridor from SJ-Oakland into a viable alternate to 880, in much the same way that 280 and 101 parallel each other between SF and SJ.

- much of the proposed Sacramento suburban freeway network of the 1970s, canceled originally due to that vote by local officials ca. 1975.  Easy to see where projects like 244 (allowing US 50 traffic going west to SF to bypass downtown Sacramento) and 143 (allowing cars getting to 80 east from 99 north to entirely skip midtown Sacramento) had their logical aims, and the unbuilt Citrus Heights-Rancho Cordova portion of 65 would have served Sunrise Mall, which currently is nowhere near any of the existing limited access routes.

Of the road projects that were active then, only some semblance of the 148 corridor (Capital Southeast Connector), and some talk about improving Business 80 in North Sacramento/Arcade (essentially similar to the 1970s attempts to upgrade then-I-80 to modern interstate standards) seem to be realistically possible now.

- 380 west of 280.  While I fully get not crossing the San Andreas Fault, not going all the way to the originally proposed Pacifica terminus...I still think having it go a tiny bit further west to Skyline Boulevard/Route 35 would be more than enough to be useful.

- Not sure the Route 4 freeway gap between Brentwood and Stockton is ever meant to be connected.

- Route 92 was originally proposed to continue east of downtown Hayward to I-580, allowing east-west traffic to bypass I-238 and the short segment of 880 between 238 and 92 that gets congested at rush hour.  Definitely not happening now.

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In Metro Manila, it almost seems like the exact opposite has happened: if San Miguel Corporation or MPTC think a route will happen, it seems like for the most part it will.  The one project that does appear to be on the back burner though (despite it reappearing in one article a couple of weeks ago) is completing the C-3 corridor between San Juan and Buendia Avenue in Makati, if only because the right of way might be blocked by the upcoming Pasig River Expressway.  (A past proposal to create a C-3 connector, the Metro Manila Skybridge, seems to have been supplanted by the eventually built Skyway Stage 3 between those two cities)

On the other hand, while it seemed for so long EDSA would be relegated to its current awkward setup as a not-quite-limited-access boulevard, San Miguel has expressed long-term interest in building a viaduct along the avenue's right of way.  Whether it will be needed quite as much once other projects have been completed (i.e. C-6/Southeast Metro Manila Expressway) remains to be seen.

[Plutonic Panda]

Another one they is actively being studied by OCTA is SR 55 through Costa Mesa. One of the concepts is a trenched freeway which I pray to god they build but I wonder if they will ever do a single thing that corridor. It sucks and should be a freeway all the way to PCH. While they're at it they need to convert PCH to a freeway LOL. Now I'm in fantasy land but boy would that be nice.

I also wonder if OCTA will ever go through with the Irvine-Corona Tunnel.

I guess we can throw 241 extension to the 5 as slim possibility likely not ever to happen now.

[SkyPesos]

Cincinnati: brent spence bridge

there's more, but that's the first thing I can think of off my head

[DTComposer]

1.  CA 17 Los Gatos-Scotts Valley.  A long tunnel notwithstanding, there's no politically/environmentally consensual solution to that problem.  So it'll be one band-aid after another (provided the whole damn range doesn't burn up in the next decade!) with little in the way of incident reduction or traffic relief to show for it.

There is this from Caltrans:
https://sccrtc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/final_hwy17_amp.pdf
If this was implemented on the Santa Cruz County side, and (I think) the following was done on the Santa Clara County side (all ranging on the unlikely side):

-Reduction of curve radius north of CA-35 interchange
-Improvements to Redwood Estates interchange
-Bridge over Moody Gulch
-Conversion of Idylwild Drive intersection to interchange
-Increased shoulder widths in Los Gatos Creek Canyon

This would significantly increase safety along the route. It wouldn't increase capacity, though; nor would I want it, current traffic levels notwithstanding.

[sparker]

be useful.

- Not sure the Route 4 freeway gap between Brentwood and Stockton is ever meant to be connected.

- Route 92 was originally proposed to continue east of downtown Hayward to I-580, allowing east-west traffic to bypass I-238 and the short segment of 880 between 238 and 92 that gets congested at rush hour.  Definitely not happening now.

The likelihood of CA 4 ever being upgraded to a freeway between Brentwood/Discovery Bay and Stockton is slim and none (and slim's left the building!).  It would not only be an environmental disaster, but the overall cost of constructing a series of berms and bridges across the heart of the Delta would be prohibitive.  If the freeway is to be extended in any direction, it'll likely be on the longstanding CA 239 corridor, which would take it generally SSE to the I-580/205 interchange near Altamont.  That would tie together much of the housing development spread out along the east side of the Diablos and the range to the south.  Also a possibility, but more remote, considering Alameda County's reticence to expand road capacity, would be a CA 84 freeway upgrade of Vasco Road, departing from that existing facility near the Alameda/Contra Costa county line and heading toward the eastern terminus of CA 84 at the I-580 Isabel interchange between Pleasanton and Livermore. 

As far as CA 92 is concerned, most of it between I-880 and the former 92/185/238 intersection in downtown Hayward has been relinquished; this was in concert with the opening of the direct ramps from EB 92 to NB I-880, one of the principal purposes of which was to divert traffic that would end up on EB I-580 away from the local surface streets and onto NB I-880 and EB I-238.  The notion of a direct 92 freeway connection to both 238 and 580 essentially died when the previously adopted CA 238 freeway alignment south to Fremont was deleted due to litigation in the '70's.   

[Echostatic]

Austin, TX -

The William Cannon Dr. exit on Loop 1 NB is an exit only, for no reason. The right lane continues past the exit as if it wasn't exit-only. There's congestion here nearly every morning as traffic merges left. It could be fixed with a bucket of grey paint, but it's been this way since 2016. I have no clue why it was changed.

On the other side of Loop 1, the left shoulder is wide enough to fit another lane. In fact, it does fit another lane further north. That lane ends immediately after a major highway junction. This one's been like that since at least 2007 when street view first came through.

South Bay Ln. ends just short of Loop 1. It's not a vital connection, but the intersection with Loop 1 was built over twenty years ago, and has spent that entire time as a useless, disconnected turnaround.

Barton Skyway doesn't connect across the Barton Creek Greenbelt - this is understandable, as the greenbelt is environmentally sensitive and the neighborhood groups are powerful in the area. But the connection would be a vital link if it were ever built.

Northland Dr. changes its name to Allandale Rd. and Koenig Ln. without changing alignment, while also carrying RM 2222 and parts of TX 69 and US 290, and being a frontage road for 290. It's a mess and they should have given it a continuous name decades ago, but it's too late now.