Lassen Trip via Stockton, Oroville and Sacramento

[coatimundi]

Got back from a short roadtrip yesterday where I went up to Lassen Volcanic National Park by way of Oroville, and went back through Sacramento.
Posting these pics now, but I'll be adding more shortly.
https://flic.kr/s/aHskF7TL7G

Route up: 1 - 156 - 101 - 680 - 84 - 580 - Vasco Road - 4 - 5 - 99 - 70 - 149 - 99 - 32 - 89
Route down: 89 - 172 - 32 - 99 - 5 - 84 - 160 - 4 - Vasco Road - Tesla/Concannon (to get around the construction) - 84 - 680 - 101 - 156 - 1

Highlights and observations:

• On the way up, I decided to drop by Stockton to see how the construction on the Crosstown Freeway extension was coming. I posted a couple of pics. All the work - both street improvements and new freeway - is going on concurrently. Hard to drive around there as a result, but the bridges are mostly up with the road deck under construction. Lots of work to do on the surface streets.
• SR 32 is a great drive. Very pretty, curvy but not too curvy, a few passing lanes, very little development, not too much traffic.
• Probably no surprise that SR 89 is not signed inside the national park and there are no mileposts. I don't know that the definition was changed, but it's obviously maintained by NPS.
• Took the opportunity to visit SR 172 since it was pretty close. Coming on SR 36 westbound, toward Red Bluff, there's no sign for it. It's a nice enough road. I saw a lot of good camping spots, and some deer.
• I deliberately took 70 up and 99 down. Last year, I took 99 from Chico to Yuba City and then cut over to 70 through town, and it took forever. I don't know that either one is better than the other.
• While in Sacramento, I was lucky enough to catch the Railyards development just being opened. The streets were previously closed off to the public while clean-up work went on. It's mostly empty streets, except some very cool old railroad warehouses at the southwest side of the area, adjacent to the Amtrak station.
• I had intended on taking the Benicia-Martinez Bridge on the way back, since I've never been on it, but traffic got really rough on I-80 before I left Sacramento and it kept getting worse, so I just decided to use the opportunity to take SR 84 all the way back to 680, including the ferry. No mileposts or signs before you leave West Sac boundaries. Once you get really into the depths of the Delta on it, it gets pretty isolated and interesting. I'm going to post pics and a little bit of info on the obscure highways thread, because I think it's a really interesting road, especially if you look at its entirety.
• On the way back, I got a chance to cruise the 680 HOT lane. Most people didn't seem to realize that they were open, even though the toll sign said it. Here's one though: when the HOT lane is open to all, is it a normal lane, like the HOV, or do you still have to respect the double white lines?

[oscar]

Probably no surprise that SR 89 is not signed inside the national park and there are no mileposts. I don't know that the definition was changed, but it's obviously maintained by NPS.

I looked into this for the Travel Mapping project. The legislative definition is a bit unclear, and some signage at the CA 44/89 junction near the northern park entrance hints that CA 89 might go through the park. But Caltrans' route logs have the route ending at the southern entrance, and restarting at the northern entrance. I would interpret the signage on CA 44 to tell motorists wishing to stay on CA 89 to drive through the park to pick up the rest of CA 89 on the other side, rather than that CA 89 exists within the park.

This isn't true for all national parks in CA, such as with the state routes entering or passing through Death Valley.

[sparker]

All the roads, including continuations of CA state highways within the original 4 national parks in CA (Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yosemite, Lassen) are owned & maintained by the NPS.  Any facsimile trailblazer signage within these parks leading to the state highways are also posted under NPS aegis.  The highways in Death Valley NP that were originally state routes are still owned & maintained by Caltrans; this is a result of the park being an "upgrade" from its former national monument status.  At this point I have yet to determine who currently maintains the other highways in Death Valley; prior to national park status, they were county-maintained routes.   

Caltrans continues to maintain the stub of the eastern section of CA 146 that enter Pinnacles NP and ends at a parking facility inside the park boundary (this is another elevation from national monument status); the western section terminates at the park boundary itself. US 101 & US 199 remain under Caltrans maintenance & jurisdiction inside Redwood NP.  The other two NP's in CA, Joshua Tree and Channel Islands, never contained any state highways.   

[Max Rockatansky]

Within Yosemite all the ways to the routes are laid out pretty clear despite the weird white spade signage.  Wawona is shown to be "to 41" and El Portal "to 140."  The one exception that seems to imply 120 (even though it's NPS maintained) as a continuous highway:



Which I suppose makes sense considering it's only route of the three to have sections on two sides of the park.

Ironic that you went to Lassen, that was where I was originally considering going until I changed things up to spend more time around Tahoe this weekend.  Back in 2014 when I was up in Lassen I didn't see the sign saying near that boiling mud pool not to walk on the ground with boiling water under it.  I realized what I did when I heard water rushing underneath me and stopped at a sulfur stream.  I took a photo and backed away...not one of my finer moments, that could've gotten ugly with burns:



I did get a pic of Lake Helen still under ice, the road through the park had just opened:



I always liked those old rail yards near Old Sacramento.  I always thought it was neat that a city that big had so much stuff left from the Old Californian Mining era.  Seemed like most of the older mining era buildings in San Francisco went out with the fire post 1906 Earthquake. 

Great pics though...I'll have to look into flickr since photobucket is way too damn slow uploading and linking stuff.

[coatimundi]

Yes, 89 is signed on the south side of the park at the turn-off from SR 36. I was just surprised that it basically disappears within the park. But there aren't big road junctions in the park like there are in some of the others, where a sign may be necessary. I guess you just have to remember which way you were going when you leave one of those lots. They do have nice, numbered POI markers along the road though.

When SR 209 still existed, didn't it end at the Cabrillo gate?
I think the BLM also now maintains the roads inside Mojave National Preserve. At least the signs they have up look like it.

[roadfro]

• On the way back, I got a chance to cruise the 680 HOT lane. Most people didn't seem to realize that they were open, even though the toll sign said it. Here's one though: when the HOT lane is open to all, is it a normal lane, like the HOV, or do you still have to respect the double white lines?

I'm pretty sure you have to abide by the double white lines at all times, even if the lane is open to all. I don't believe any provision exists that would allow one to ignore the typical "do not cross" meaning of the double solid lines.

[myosh_tino]

• On the way back, I got a chance to cruise the 680 HOT lane. Most people didn't seem to realize that they were open, even though the toll sign said it. Here's one though: when the HOT lane is open to all, is it a normal lane, like the HOV, or do you still have to respect the double white lines?

I'm pretty sure you have to abide by the double white lines at all times, even if the lane is open to all. I don't believe any provision exists that would allow one to ignore the typical "do not cross" meaning of the double solid lines.

That is correct.

Even though the lane is "open to all",  you cannot cross the double white lines.  The best way to think about it is as a toll-free express lane.

[TheStranger]

• I deliberately took 70 up and 99 down. Last year, I took 99 from Chico to Yuba City and then cut over to 70 through town, and it took forever. I don't know that either one is better than the other.

I used to drive up that way from Sacramento to Chico to catch weekend auto races at Silver Dollar Speedway every once in a while...at the time (2008-2009), the 70 bypass of East Nicolaus had not been completed, so both routes were pretty much equally slow.

What's changed since then is 70 becoming full freeway between 65 in Olivehurst and its southern terminus at 99 in Catlett...I would say now that even considering the Marysville bottleneck, 70 has the longer stretches of uninterrupted fast road, while 99 is decent up to the southern limits of Yuba City, and then briefly through it on a discontinuous freeway that begins at Route 20 and heads north for a few miles.  99 passing through Gridley, Live Oak, etc. slows down and isn't particularly great as a through route until the Route 149 junction north of Oroville.

• While in Sacramento, I was lucky enough to catch the Railyards development just being opened. The streets were previously closed off to the public while clean-up work went on. It's mostly empty streets, except some very cool old railroad warehouses at the southwest side of the area, adjacent to the Amtrak station.

When I used to live out there, the Railyards area was one of the spots considered for the new Kings arena - which instead ended up in the eastern part of the Downtown Plaza mall, in the spot where Hard Rock Cafe and a Macy's used to be.  A soccer stadium is now planned within the Railyards district:
http://www.sacrepublicfc.com/football-club/built-for-mls-sacramento/railyards

• I had intended on taking the Benicia-Martinez Bridge on the way back, since I've never been on it, but traffic got really rough on I-80 before I left Sacramento and it kept getting worse, so I just decided to use the opportunity to take SR 84 all the way back to 680, including the ferry. No mileposts or signs before you leave West Sac boundaries.
  

IIRC, 84 within West Sacramento was decommissioned a few years back (though I don't think it was ever signed in town - I have never seen anything there even dating back to my college years at Davis ca. 2003, and it has never been signed from I-80 or US 50/Business 80).  Interestingly, there was one point where the route definition for 84 and the old Route 16 alignment through West Sacramento overlapped, something only addressed when the gap in Route 16 was created in 1984.

Since the middle portion of Route 84 connecting Livermore with Rio Vista (the Vasco Road alignment) has never been signed as 84, I to this day have always wondered why two completely different corridors were given that one route number, especially when combined they don't really make sense as one route for 99% of travelers.

[jrouse]

How did you get from 5 over to 84 on your return trip?  They didn't intersect, so I assume you used local streets in downtown Sacramento and West Sacramento?


iPhone

[coatimundi]

Since the middle portion of Route 84 connecting Livermore with Rio Vista (the Vasco Road alignment) has never been signed as 84, I to this day have always wondered why two completely different corridors were given that one route number, especially when combined they don't really make sense as one route for 99% of travelers.

Driving Vasco Road, the first thing that comes to mind, I think, is how it looks a lot like a state highway. And it really functions as one, certainly as much as 84 south of 580 does.
But I thought it wasn't connected because there were once plans for a more direct freeway to 4 over a new alignment.
http://trilink239.org/

When it comes down to it, I don't know that anyone needs to be encouraged to take 84 through the Delta, and a connected routing via the Antioch Bridge may do that. The ferry, that runs every 20 minutes, had three cars on it in my direction, and I scarcely saw anyone on the road south of the bridge to Ryer Island. Even north of that, it was pretty empty. The levee portions of the road are very curvy and it's hard to stay above 40. Speeding would be dangerous too, because there's a lot of water to drive into.
The funniest thing to me about this whole drive is that, from Sac to Marina, it took me a bit over 4 hours, and that was with a poorly timed ferry arrival (I waited almost the full 20 minutes), a stop for gas in Brentwood and some traffic in Gilroy. It probably would have taken me more time if I had actually sat through the Bay Area slog, or taken the I-5 route that I often do. And I very much preferred this route.

[sparker]

On pretty much every iteration ('59 and after) of the California Freeway & Expressway System, as seen on the periodically-released maps, CA 84 north of I-580 is shown as a proposed corridor; an exact routing was never formally adopted.  It merged with the CA 239 corridor (the NW extension of the I-580 trajectory north of Altamont Pass) near Byron, and the combined corridors merged with CA 4 only a couple of miles north of that point.  Originally, CA 160 from Antioch to CA 12 across the river from Rio Vista was legislatively designated as CA 84 (but always signed as CA 160, even though mile markers indicated 84); the formal re-designation as 160 came some time later; this indicated that CA 84, as originally planned in the '64 renumbering, was intended to be one continuous route from San Gregorio to West Sacramento.  I, for one, have never understood why, after the re-designation of the "central" section as CA 160, the designation of the Rio Vista to W. Sacramento segment was not changed as well (it's not as if Caltrans was running out of numbers after the various decommissionings over the years), leaving CA 84 as two discontinuous route sections.