US 101 and the Last Chance Grade

[Quillz]

Cool and there's tons of transit tunnels being built as well. Maybe I'm just not explaining myself clearly enough max idk

That must be it. Because if your claim is simply "California/USA has never been able to build tunnels," that's just a laughably objective false statement.

[Quillz]

So they're going to spend a couple billion dollars to save a few hundred "large-diameter old-growth redwood trees"? The hell with the trees, just move the road inland off the steep slope.

It takes thousands of years to make a large old-growth tree, and those trees are key to their whole ecosystem.

Maybe you haven't been keeping up with inflation, but just about every project worth doing costs in the billions these days.

And I'm not at all sure relocating the highway inland would help.  The whole coast range is unstable and prone to landslides.  To really get out of the landslide area you'd probably have to relocate the highway to I-5, which would kind of defeat the purpose of the highway giving access to California's north coast.  I guess we could abandon the North Coast...

Environmentalists never seem to have much of a sense of proportion. Even if the relocated road went smack dab through the thickest part of the old-growth grove, it wouldn't reduce the number of old-growth trees by even a percent, which hardly seems like a recipe for ecological collapse. And at least the people in the cars would be able to do the things they say they go there for: look at the trees. You can't do that from inside a tunnel.

But I'm not even talking about that. Peruse the area in Google Earth. Going from south to north, a thousand-foot piece of road off the current alignment, just north of the overlook, would get out of the Redwoods Park on a fairly gentle grade. Then, it could travel along the edge of an area that has obviously been logged in the past century, and therefore has no old-growth trees, perhaps just west of the power line corridor. This is as nearly flat as the rest of the road up to Crescent City, which doesn't seem to be slide-plagued. Then, another thousand-foot connector in the Park back to the current alignment. It wouldn't cost anything to remove the trees--logging companies would be bidding to pay for the privilege.

What people will miss from any realignment has nothing to do with trees, it's the loss of the ocean view. But there's plenty of that along US-101 and CA-1.

If it's as simple and non-encroaching as you seem to think it is, why wasn't this the chosen outcome?

[Quillz]

I'm against plowing through a redwood forest, but pderocco's take on this would garner many a stare or laugh during outreach related to NEPA...

CEQA would be the bigger problem here. Coast redwoods are endangered, cutting a ton down is a non-starter if any alternative exists. Old-growth redwoods in particular are untouchable. This is a lot of why US 101 is substandard through Richardson Grove. Whether or not coast redwoods need the level of protection they have in California is irrelevant given that they are protected and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

I also would like to see his documentation and/or sources that plowing through the heaviest dense forest would be "less than a percentage," and what studies have been done to show this will have zero impact on the surrounding forests. Because if there's one thing I know about that area, it's very sensitive ecologically. We often make assumptions that road building or other activity will have "hardly an impact leading to ecological collapse," and yet long term impacts are not always obvious until much later on.

[pderocco]

Peruse the area in Google Earth. Going from south to north, a thousand-foot piece of road off the current alignment, just north of the overlook, would get out of the Redwoods Park on a fairly gentle grade. Then, it could travel along the edge of an area that has obviously been logged in the past century, and therefore has no old-growth trees, perhaps just west of the power line corridor. This is as nearly flat as the rest of the road up to Crescent City, which doesn't seem to be slide-plagued. Then, another thousand-foot connector in the Park back to the current alignment. It wouldn't cost anything to remove the trees--logging companies would be bidding to pay for the privilege.

What people will miss from any realignment has nothing to do with trees, it's the loss of the ocean view. But there's plenty of that along US-101 and CA-1.

If it's as simple and non-encroaching as you seem to think it is, why wasn't this the chosen outcome?

Actually, now that I look more closely, the initial climb would be pretty steep. It would take a switchback to keep it down to a slope that's reasonable for a US highway. But hey, switchbacks are kind of cool.

[Quillz]

Peruse the area in Google Earth. Going from south to north, a thousand-foot piece of road off the current alignment, just north of the overlook, would get out of the Redwoods Park on a fairly gentle grade. Then, it could travel along the edge of an area that has obviously been logged in the past century, and therefore has no old-growth trees, perhaps just west of the power line corridor. This is as nearly flat as the rest of the road up to Crescent City, which doesn't seem to be slide-plagued. Then, another thousand-foot connector in the Park back to the current alignment. It wouldn't cost anything to remove the trees--logging companies would be bidding to pay for the privilege.

What people will miss from any realignment has nothing to do with trees, it's the loss of the ocean view. But there's plenty of that along US-101 and CA-1.

If it's as simple and non-encroaching as you seem to think it is, why wasn't this the chosen outcome?

Actually, now that I look more closely, the initial climb would be pretty steep. It would take a switchback to keep it down to a slope that's reasonable for a US highway. But hey, switchbacks are kind of cool.

Yes, I don't mind switchbacks. But given this is the 101, the straightest possible alignment (which I guess is the tunnel) is likely going to win out. That would line up with work that was done back in the 60s to widen and straighten 101 through the Redwood Curtain (with the old alignments becoming CA-254 and CA-271).

And I agree the biggest loss with the new alignment is fewer ocean views. (There are some nice ones on the way to Crescent City). But that's a pretty small price to pay for a road that theoretically will not have to close nearly as often in the future. (And from what I remember, you get much better ocean views farther south anyway).

[Max Rockatansky]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

[Quillz]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Hmm... Is this the bike path you can access from various points in Prairie Creek? I do remember a paved trail in pretty bad condition and I never knew why it was there when everything else was dirt. I forget exactly where it was but it's accessed from the scenic parkway. I just remember parking somewhere and seeing a bike path that follows the coast for many miles.

[Max Rockatansky]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Hmm... Is this the bike path you can access from various points in Prairie Creek? I do remember a paved trail in pretty bad condition and I never knew why it was there when everything else was dirt. I forget exactly where it was but it's accessed from the scenic parkway. I just remember parking somewhere and seeing a bike path that follows the coast for many miles.

What I'm talking about appears on most maps as Coastal Drive or Coastal Trail.

[Quillz]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Hmm... Is this the bike path you can access from various points in Prairie Creek? I do remember a paved trail in pretty bad condition and I never knew why it was there when everything else was dirt. I forget exactly where it was but it's accessed from the scenic parkway. I just remember parking somewhere and seeing a bike path that follows the coast for many miles.

What I'm talking about appears on most maps as Coastal Drive or Coastal Trail.

Oh yeah, that sounds like it. Within Prairie Creek it's indeed usually referred to as the "Coastal Bike Trail" or something similar. Had no idea that was once part of 101!

EDIT: Oh wait no, that doesn't seem to be it. Looks like what you're referring to is closer to Klamath, near the modern 101/169 junction.



EDIT 2: Ah, there is a section that branches off the scenic parkway, but it's different from the bike path (which has a similar name). Very interesting, learned something new today. Wasn't even aware of this road or it being part of 101.



Although my guess is it does partially overlap with the thing I was thinking of. Looks like a more modern bike path continues south, so you can likely access it from this older road.

[kkt]

So they're going to spend a couple billion dollars to save a few hundred "large-diameter old-growth redwood trees"? The hell with the trees, just move the road inland off the steep slope.

It takes thousands of years to make a large old-growth tree, and those trees are key to their whole ecosystem.

Maybe you haven't been keeping up with inflation, but just about every project worth doing costs in the billions these days.

And I'm not at all sure relocating the highway inland would help.  The whole coast range is unstable and prone to landslides.  To really get out of the landslide area you'd probably have to relocate the highway to I-5, which would kind of defeat the purpose of the highway giving access to California's north coast.  I guess we could abandon the North Coast...

Environmentalists never seem to have much of a sense of proportion. Even if the relocated road went smack dab through the thickest part of the old-growth grove, it wouldn't reduce the number of old-growth trees by even a percent, which hardly seems like a recipe for ecological collapse. And at least the people in the cars would be able to do the things they say they go there for: look at the trees. You can't do that from inside a tunnel.

But I'm not even talking about that. Peruse the area in Google Earth. Going from south to north, a thousand-foot piece of road off the current alignment, just north of the overlook, would get out of the Redwoods Park on a fairly gentle grade. Then, it could travel along the edge of an area that has obviously been logged in the past century, and therefore has no old-growth trees, perhaps just west of the power line corridor. This is as nearly flat as the rest of the road up to Crescent City, which doesn't seem to be slide-plagued. Then, another thousand-foot connector in the Park back to the current alignment. It wouldn't cost anything to remove the trees--logging companies would be bidding to pay for the privilege.

What people will miss from any realignment has nothing to do with trees, it's the loss of the ocean view. But there's plenty of that along US-101 and CA-1.

I think you are lacking a sense of proportion:

- 95% of old grown redwoods are gone already.

- Caltrans budget is about $18 billion per year, and constructing the tunnel open is estimated to take about 14 years.  So over that 14 years, Caltrans will be going through about $252 billion.  A couple of billion towards this tunnel would be about 0.8% of Caltrans budget during those years.

- Caltrans esimates they have spent over $100 million in the last 25 years keeping the sliding area of the road open.  There are also costs associated with the road being closed or reduced to one direction.

The area of the power line ROW is not flat.  Power lines don't need a flat ROW, they just need a logged space so trees don't fall into them in a storm. They look like a nice straight line on an aerial photo, but it's a straight line no road could follow.  Are you looking at aerial view?  That's misleading because the tops of trees even out the land at their base.  Turn on terrain view to see the contours.  This is very rugged country, and a parallel road would suffer from landslides about as much as the current ROW.

[Plutonic Panda]

Who was it that was complaining about California never being able to build highway tunnels?  All it seemingly takes is unsolvable long term landslides that aren't in Big Sur.

Regarding Devils Slide, I always wonder if Pedro Mountain Road had been maintained if 1 hypothetically would have reverted to it? 

Right, I said California has never been able to build a tunnel. Why don't you calm down there skipper and see if this actually gets built until mocking me about the Unite States' inability to build tunnels nowadays even if this one single tunnel gets built. Somewhere along the line I must've struck a nerve with you. Not sure why.

However, despite all of that, I am very happy to hear they are considering a tunnel here as the preferred alternative.

Why did you say "they've never been able to build a tunnel" when there are a lot of tunnels in California, including the Tom Lantos Tunnels from only a decade ago?

Can you please show me where I ever said California has never been able to build a tunnel?

[Plutonic Panda]

Cool and there's tons of transit tunnels being built as well. Maybe I'm just not explaining myself clearly enough max idk

That must be it. Because if your claim is simply "California/USA has never been able to build tunnels," that's just a laughably objective false statement.

Once again, where have I said that?

[Quillz]

The post I quoted. You said "California has never been able to build a tunnel." And the part where you said the United States has never built tunnels recently, even though that's objectively false.

Who was it that was complaining about California never being able to build highway tunnels?  All it seemingly takes is unsolvable long term landslides that aren't in Big Sur.

Regarding Devils Slide, I always wonder if Pedro Mountain Road had been maintained if 1 hypothetically would have reverted to it? 

Right, I said California has never been able to build a tunnel. Why don't you calm down there skipper and see if this actually gets built until mocking me about the Unite States' inability to build tunnels nowadays even if this one single tunnel gets built. Somewhere along the line I must've struck a nerve with you. Not sure why.

However, despite all of that, I am very happy to hear they are considering a tunnel here as the preferred alternative.

[cl94]

Tunnels have a high initial cost and they have some level of maintenance cost. But compared to a surface road over steep slopes, there will be significant long-term benefits. Caltrans spends a fortune keeping these roads along unstable slopes open. Need to have people on call to respond, need to pay a ton of overtime to clear any slides, need to frequently repair the road and replace signs, need to maintain slide fences and netting, need to frequently inspect for cracks, etc. so you don't get a Teton Pass situation. Those costs add up and it's hard to measure the economic harm to the surrounding region when the road is either closed or reduced to a single lane. The tunnel was chosen because it was the only option with a low risk of long-term closure in the next half-century.

Never mind that, even if not for the trees, an inland surface alignment would likely have much greater environmental impacts. Erosion is a bitch and those waterways along the North Coast are very sensitive.

A bigger concern: the Cascadia Fault will rupture at some point in the future. We don't know when, but when it does, it will likely trigger several landslides. Modern tunnels are quite safe in earthquakes if they don't cross a fault line, which this would not. A tunnel is one fewer place the road could slide away and impede disaster recovery.

[Quillz]

Tunnels have a high initial cost and they have some level of maintenance cost. But compared to a surface road over steep slopes, there will be significant long-term benefits. Caltrans spends a fortune keeping these roads along unstable slopes open. Need to have people on call to respond, need to pay a ton of overtime to clear any slides, need to frequently repair the road and replace signs, need to maintain slide fences and netting, need to frequently inspect for cracks, etc. so you don't get a Teton Pass situation. Those costs add up and it's hard to measure the economic harm to the surrounding region when the road is either closed or reduced to a single lane. The tunnel was chosen because it was the only option with a low risk of long-term closure in the next half-century.

Never mind that, even if not for the trees, an inland surface alignment would likely have much greater environmental impacts. Erosion is a bitch and those waterways along the North Coast are very sensitive.

A bigger concern: the Cascadia Fault will rupture at some point in the future. We don't know when, but when it does, it will likely trigger several landslides. Modern tunnels are quite safe in earthquakes if they don't cross a fault line, which this would not. A tunnel is one fewer place the road could slide away and impede disaster recovery.

All good points. I've posted the story before about how I got stuck in this exact area some years ago. I was supposed to overnight in Crescent City en route to Oregon. Well, literally about an hour before I would have gotten there, there was a rock slide that ended up closing the road for a full day before it opened to a single lane, and remained that way for a couple months. So I had to drive all the way back south to Arcata, and I was already low on gas.

[pderocco]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Hmm... Is this the bike path you can access from various points in Prairie Creek? I do remember a paved trail in pretty bad condition and I never knew why it was there when everything else was dirt. I forget exactly where it was but it's accessed from the scenic parkway. I just remember parking somewhere and seeing a bike path that follows the coast for many miles.

What I'm talking about appears on most maps as Coastal Drive or Coastal Trail.

Coastal Dr is visible in GSV. It's on my itinerary for a long car trip I'm starting in a week, so I should be driving it some time around the beginning of July. While I'm at it, I'll clinch the dinky little county sign routes in the area. (The D must stand for dinky.)

I just reread the Gribblenation blog post on the bridge, and am wondering in what order they built things. Did they build the new bridge first, and then use Klamath Beach Rd as a temporary connection to the existing 101 while they built the new alignment?

[Quillz]

I'm planning to be in the area again around October. I'll probably check it out, too. If it's drivable, cool. But I do believe it connects to a bike path which is a nice way to see the park. (As opposed to last year when I ended up doing the Zig Zag trail not realizing there were a lot of downed trees.)

[Max Rockatansky]

US 101 north of the Mad River has been moving more and more inland since the 1964 Christmas Floods.  There is an ancient cliff-side alignment long eroded between Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and the ruins of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Hmm... Is this the bike path you can access from various points in Prairie Creek? I do remember a paved trail in pretty bad condition and I never knew why it was there when everything else was dirt. I forget exactly where it was but it's accessed from the scenic parkway. I just remember parking somewhere and seeing a bike path that follows the coast for many miles.

What I'm talking about appears on most maps as Coastal Drive or Coastal Trail.

Coastal Dr is visible in GSV. It's on my itinerary for a long car trip I'm starting in a week, so I should be driving it some time around the beginning of July. While I'm at it, I'll clinch the dinky little county sign routes in the area. (The D must stand for dinky.)

I just reread the Gribblenation blog post on the bridge, and am wondering in what order they built things. Did they build the new bridge first, and then use Klamath Beach Rd as a temporary connection to the existing 101 while they built the new alignment?

From what I remember the new alignment was built concurrent to the new bridge.  The Douglas Bridge was temporarily repaired and made a functional roadway. The new alignment diverged where Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway splits from Coastal Drive.

[pderocco]

I think you are lacking a sense of proportion:

- 95% of old grown redwoods are gone already.

- Caltrans budget is about $18 billion per year, and constructing the tunnel open is estimated to take about 14 years.  So over that 14 years, Caltrans will be going through about $252 billion.  A couple of billion towards this tunnel would be about 0.8% of Caltrans budget during those years.

- Caltrans esimates they have spent over $100 million in the last 25 years keeping the sliding area of the road open.  There are also costs associated with the road being closed or reduced to one direction.

The area of the power line ROW is not flat.  Power lines don't need a flat ROW, they just need a logged space so trees don't fall into them in a storm. They look like a nice straight line on an aerial photo, but it's a straight line no road could follow.  Are you looking at aerial view?  That's misleading because the tops of trees even out the land at their base.  Turn on terrain view to see the contours.  This is very rugged country, and a parallel road would suffer from landslides about as much as the current ROW.

If whatever old-growth is lost to a 100ft corridor four miles long is an ecological disaster, then building US-101 and every other road in the area must have been a mega-catastrophe, based simply on the land area consumed. But both pale in comparison to logging, and they're not doing that in the Redwood Park area.

Amortizing a couple of billion dollars over 14 years makes it seem more palatable, but most of that money will be spent in the final few years as they actually build the tunnel. The rest is study, paperwork, and bureaucracy.

But I don't doubt that the terrain is fairly lumpy, and might need a bridge or two along the way, as an alternative to a tunnel. But that can'tbe as expensive as a tunnel.

And there's also the aversion many people have to long tunnels.

[Max Rockatansky]

The whole area is fascinating to me in the sense that almost every community was based around logging.  I'm not sure how some of those towns and cities hang on in modern times with the industry effectively dead. 

Interesting to consider much of the Lost Coast portion of 1 was intended to serve logging interests (especially along the Usal Road corridor).  Even by the late 1950s that concept was pretty much dead.  Th3 state took federal aid money to improve the road from Rockport to Leggett as the then temporary terminus of 1.

[pderocco]

Tunnels have a high initial cost and they have some level of maintenance cost. But compared to a surface road over steep slopes, there will be significant long-term benefits. Caltrans spends a fortune keeping these roads along unstable slopes open. Need to have people on call to respond, need to pay a ton of overtime to clear any slides, need to frequently repair the road and replace signs, need to maintain slide fences and netting, need to frequently inspect for cracks, etc. so you don't get a Teton Pass situation. Those costs add up and it's hard to measure the economic harm to the surrounding region when the road is either closed or reduced to a single lane. The tunnel was chosen because it was the only option with a low risk of long-term closure in the next half-century.

Never mind that, even if not for the trees, an inland surface alignment would likely have much greater environmental impacts. Erosion is a bitch and those waterways along the North Coast are very sensitive.

A bigger concern: the Cascadia Fault will rupture at some point in the future. We don't know when, but when it does, it will likely trigger several landslides. Modern tunnels are quite safe in earthquakes if they don't cross a fault line, which this would not. A tunnel is one fewer place the road could slide away and impede disaster recovery.

You make a lot of reasonable points. But this is just one short stretch of road. Either moving it inland might be an adequate solution, or much of the rest of US-101 in the area, even if not on the edge of a cliff, might need to be bypassed by a tunnel too someday.

It seems to me that the evolution of road construction in difficult terrain is largely about the willingness to move more and more dirt. We've all been on older roads that have been cut into steep slopes, and look like they're just asking for a slide. And we've all been on more recent roads that have reshaped the land substantially. CA-299 west of Whiskeytown lake is a good example of the latter. I wonder how much that costs compared to tunneling.

[Plutonic Panda]

The post I quoted. You said "California has never been able to build a tunnel." And the part where you said the United States has never built tunnels recently, even though that's objectively false.

Who was it that was complaining about California never being able to build highway tunnels?  All it seemingly takes is unsolvable long term landslides that aren't in Big Sur.

Regarding Devils Slide, I always wonder if Pedro Mountain Road had been maintained if 1 hypothetically would have reverted to it? 

Right, I said California has never been able to build a tunnel. Why don't you calm down there skipper and see if this actually gets built until mocking me about the Unite States' inability to build tunnels nowadays even if this one single tunnel gets built. Somewhere along the line I must've struck a nerve with you. Not sure why.

However, despite all of that, I am very happy to hear they are considering a tunnel here as the preferred alternative.

The post I quoted. You said "California has never been able to build a tunnel." And the part where you said the United States has never built tunnels recently, even though that's objectively false.

Who was it that was complaining about California never being able to build highway tunnels?  All it seemingly takes is unsolvable long term landslides that aren't in Big Sur.

Regarding Devils Slide, I always wonder if Pedro Mountain Road had been maintained if 1 hypothetically would have reverted to it? 

Right, I said California has never been able to build a tunnel. Why don't you calm down there skipper and see if this actually gets built until mocking me about the Unite States' inability to build tunnels nowadays even if this one single tunnel gets built. Somewhere along the line I must've struck a nerve with you. Not sure why.

However, despite all of that, I am very happy to hear they are considering a tunnel here as the preferred alternative.

OK at this point it seems like you're just being a troll. If you don't know, the word facetious is and you have issues with reading comprehension, I'm not even gonna bother to put any more effort into this response.

[Quillz]

How am I trolling? I asked a question based on something you posted. 

[Plutonic Panda]

How am I trolling? I asked a question based on something you posted.

Because you don't seem to be genuine. The quote you gave me was me being sarcastic. I even admitted California has built tunnels just a few posts up yet you claim I have said California has never built tunnels and when asked for proof of said statement you quote an out of context sarcastic remark. Come on.

Then you said I said you said I said The United States never builds tunnels which is not true and I never said that.

[Quillz]

Agsin, was quoting what you said. If you intended sarcasm, your post should have made that more clear. Intent doesn't always read properly online.