March has been a busy busy month for me, but I have found time to accumulate some headlines. As it is lunchtime on the last day of the month, enjoy these while you munch:
- Caltrans Removes East Span as Part of Bay Bridge Seismic Retrofit Project. The 77-year-old east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is being taken down, piece by piece, as part of a Bay Bridge seismic retrofit project. In fact, the new bridge was designed to be a lifeline in a large quake. It will be used to transport food and emergency supplies to San Francisco or Oakland in an emergency. The new east span of the bridge opened in 2013. The self-anchored suspension bridge was built at a cost of $6.4 billion.
- Roadshow: Highway 140 to Yosemite needs 4 more years of work. Q: If you’ve been to Yosemite during the last several years and have taken Highway 140, you’ve seen the massive landslide west of Yosemite View Lodge. The slide completely covered the highway, and Caltrans was forced to build two bridges to detour around it. There’s a sign that labels the repair work as the “Ferguson Project.” However, it doesn’t look like any work is under way. This is a heavily traveled route. Is there any projected completion date?
- MTA plans for the next 40 years include historic streetcars … in 2053. The MTA is unveiling its full proposal for what transit lines could be built — and when — if Los Angeles County voters approve a half-cent sales tax increase in November. Full details of the plans, including the highway work. Another copy.
- Map of Westchester CA before the freeways.
- Highway 17 named one of California’s most dangerous roads. Crashes on Highway 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz have hit a 10 year high. And now, many who use the road on a regular basis are hoping that these new figures will serve as a wake-up call for other drivers. As more people use this highway than ever before, there’s an even greater opportunity for something to go wrong. Some people ABC7 News spoke with had a story to share about the close calls they’ve encountered on the highway.
- Three East Bay highway overcrossings deemed ‘structurally deficient’ by federal officials. Three East Bay interstate highway overcrossings, including an 18-year-old structure in Pleasant Hill, are among California’s 25 most traveled that are rated “structurally deficient,” according to a report from a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. The Interstate 680 crossing of Monument Boulevard, a long, thick concrete-and-steel structure built in 1998, makes the list. So too do structures on I-880 bridging Whipple Avenue in Union City and over San Leandro Creek and a Union Pacific rail line in San Leandro.
- Valley highway projects face lack of state funding, coalition says. A coalition of Valley leaders gathered along Highway 180 on Wednesday to ask state government for steady transportation funding in the wake of cuts to current and future highway projects. Representatives from the cities of Sanger, Tulare and Fresno shared a podium with union leaders and a spokesman for the California Transportation Commission, which recently announced a $754 million cut to the state transportation budget over the next five years. Each spoke on the short-term and long-term needs for a steady state funding source to ensure California roads and highways receive the maintenance and updates they desperately need.
- Hollywood versus the freeway that carries its name. Building the freeways through postwar Los Angeles was a hugely disruptive process that bludgeoned through long-standing neighborhoods, cleaved communities with a huge obstruction and forced thousands of Angelenos out of their homes. There has never been anything like it happen to the city since. Perhaps none of the first freeways were as painful to build as the Hollywood Freeway, which began life as the Cahuenga Pass Parkway, a divided expressway into the pass linking Hollywood with the San Fernando Valley. On the KCET website, Lost LA historian Nathan Masters has collected old photos of the carnage from the collections of the USC library (his employer) and the Los Angeles Public Library and retold the story of what the Hollywood Freeway wrought.
- Ads, ads and more ads, but not on 280 . We know that advertising plays a major role in selling all sorts of things. Ads proliferate the Internet to pay for free information and entertainment. They interrupt free TV. We are forced to watch them in the movie theater before the main feature. Our ball parks keep getting new corporate names to provide revenue for host cities and teams. According to Gail Collins in a recent New York Times column, “ there’s a stadium in Akron, Ohio named InfoCision. And there’s the KFC Yum Center in Louisville, Ky. Cities have sold their souls when it comes to naming rights.” Caltrain and SamTrans are wrapped in psychedelic ads to obtain revenue. Even KQED succumbs. Now San Mateo County is considering new billboards on Highway 101 to augment the county budget. But when word broke out about a section of County Manager John Maltbie’s report to the Board of Supervisors headed “Outdoor Advertising program being considered along Highways I-280 and 101,” all hell broke loose.
- Opponents sneak up on Liberty Canyon catwalk . Support remains strong for the plan to build a more than $50-million wildlife bridge across the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills. But as the project begins to take shape, opponents are mobilizing. The City of Calabasas hosted a Feb. 25 meeting titled “ 101 Freeway Wildlife Crossing: How Does It Benefit You, Your Business and the City?” About 200 people came to Founders Hall to hear details about the financing, timing and feasibility of the proposed catwalk and how it will benefit the local mountain lion population and other wildlife.
- 225 California transportation projects in trouble. Californians are paying less in gas taxes, and much less at the pump, as oil prices have plummeted. While that may pad drivers’ wallets, the result could be what officials are calling a “catastrophic” impact on the Golden State’s highways and city streets. The combined loss in state transportation revenue — more than $1.1 billion — has put high-profile improvement projects at risk of being canceled or facing delays that could stretch for years.
- List: Bay Area transportation projects that are losing funding. This is the amount of state funding that is being slashed this year for these key Bay Area and Central Coast projects, putting them at risk of delay or cancellation.
- Robin Williams tunnel officially gets new signs. Several months after legislation to name the rainbow-arched so-called Waldo tunnel connecting the Golden Gate bridge to Marin County, the newly dubbed Robin Williams tunnel finally got official. The tunnel’s moniker, which was officially confirmed last June, was meant as a dedication to the late actor and comedian’s life. Many thought that the tunnel’s rainbow border was a natural reminder of his character Mork from “Mork & Mindy,” who wore multi-colored suspenders on the show.
- Proposed ‘Wildlife Corridor’ Across LA Highway Would be World’s Largest. California may become home to the world’s largest wildlife overpass, which would stretch over the 101 Freeway outside of Los Angeles. The project, named the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Corridor, has been in the works for the last couple years. It is a collaborative effort to protect the region’s mountain lions, as well as deer, coyotes and other species. The mountain lions living in the area of the Santa Monica Mountains are essentially trapped, surrounded by freeways leading to the megacity of LA.
- How the new Gold Line route will impact traffic on the 210 Freeway. Will the Gold Line Foothill Extension improve traffic on the 210 Freeway in the San Gabriel Valley? The answer may never be known because the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), Caltrans, and the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority don’t show any interest in finding out.
- 7 key Bay Area transportation projects likely to lose funding. Seven Bay Area transportation projects that could untangle congested interchanges, make East Bay BART stations brighter and more comfortable, create better routes for bicyclists and smooth the drive for commuters may be delayed for years, regional transportation officials decided Wednesday. A committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission reluctantly identified a $71.3 million collection of projects to lose financing for at least five years to cope with a massive cut in state funding blamed on plummeting gas tax revenues and a lethargic Legislature that has failed to heed the governor’s call for a transportation funding fix.
- ‘Dream Weird or Go Home’: MTC on Bay Bridge Bike Path Designs. From the inspired to the imaginative, the ideas for a sky path connecting Yerba Buena Island to San Francisco are anything but dull. Designs range from gradual inclines to dizzying spiral ramps, taking cyclists and pedestrians 150 feet from the ground to the Bay Bridge.
- Take a Look at Glendale’s Plans For a Park on Top of the 134 Freeway. Glendale’s plans to cap part of the 134 Freeway with a park are finally really starting to take shape. (There’s a plan to cap the 101 in Downtown and in Hollywood, plus a plan for a 60 Freeway cap in East LA and two 10 Freeway caps in Santa Monica, but none of those projects has moved very far in a long time.) New renderings for the cap park—Space 134—show what the 24-acre green space could look like, and give a better idea of how the park will be laid out, says Urbanize LA, citing a website from Glendale’s Community Development Department.
- Will Metro’s tunneling under Los Angeles spur a 710 Freeway tunnel?. When Bertha, a giant tunnel-boring machine, stalled and nearly caught fire beneath downtown Seattle, opponents of a similar tunnel proposed for the 710 Freeway between Alhambra and Pasadena would point to the drill’s troubles and say if they can’t do it there, they can’t do it here. But after a two-year delay, Bertha is back in business as of March 7, churning out a roadway tunnel that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct (SR-99), an old freeway with structural problems.
- Los Angeles area can claim the worst traffic in America. Again. Southern California has, yet again, clinched the dubious distinction of having the country’s worst traffic. Drivers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana region spent 81 hours idling on freeways in 2015, the worst cumulative delay of any U.S. metropolitan area, according to a study released Tuesday by the data company Inrix.
- Roadshow: SoCal-style truck lanes coming to the Bay Area. Q There are truck-passing lanes on Interstate 5 at the Grapevine. Why don’t we have them here in the Bay Area?
- Northern California highway crumbles as storm-soaked hillside collapses. Days of rain caused a hillside to collapse and part of a state highway through Trinity County to crumble and wash away this week, cutting off a main pass for locals, Caltrans officials said. A stretch of pavement several car-lengths long was washed away on California 3 north of Weaverville along with the hillside that supported it between Monday night and Tuesday morning, photos posted on Caltrans’ Facebook page showed. The area, along with most of the northern portion of California, has been soaked by a series of storms since the beginning of the month.
- Caltrans Victorville I-15 Construction Plan. Caltrans officials said on Friday that they have begun the $71 million project, reconstructing the interchanges at Stoddard Wells, D Street, and E Street and widen the Mojave River Bridge on the I-15 in Victorville.
- CALTRANS CHARTERS NEW INNOVATION GROUP. Caltrans and Federal Highway Administration leaders today signed a charter establishing the California State Transportation Innovation Council (STIC), which will serve as a forum for advocating and overseeing the rapid deployment of innovations in the transportation sector. The goal of the STIC is to identify new strategies to respond to the challenges impacting California’s transportation infrastructure and to promote innovations that will deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable transportation system
- City Council Reconsiders 710 Tunnel. The San Marino City Council had reaffirmed its support of the proposed 710 tunnel option in 2012, a resolution that was initially approved in 2006. As new information has been released and a new council formed, San Marino City Council Member Steve Talt requested that the group take another look at why they support the extension of the 710 Freeway. “I have never seen an express rationale as to why,” Talt said.
- I-405 Improvement Project Moves Forward with Cooperative Agreements. At its meeting on March 14, the OCTA Board of Directors voted to enter into cooperative agreements with the cities of Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, and Westminster to provide city services required during the design-build implementation of the Interstate 405 (I-405) Improvement Project. Because the project includes improvements to city-owned and operated streets and will impact some city traffic facilities, a cooperative agreement with each of the I-405 corridor cities is necessary to define the roles and responsibilities of each agency during the project’s implementation.
- How will California’s freeways survive a major earthquake?.The 1971 Sylmar earthquake sent a 6.6-magnitude jolt through the Newhall Pass, toppling a new interchange at Interstate 5 and Highway 14 and two nearby freeway overpasses, killing two. The 1994 Northridge earthquake sent an even stronger tremor through the San Fernando Valley, once again demolishing the “5-14 split.” LAPD Officer Clarence Wayne Dean, whose police motorcycle sailed off a freeway precipice, was killed. Since then, the state has spent billions shoring up freeway bridges and overpasses. Nonetheless, Southern California’s maze of freeways, roads and railroads could still be impacted in the next major quake.
- Traffic on the 405 Isn’t That Bad. Really!. It’s one of Los Angeles’ most enduring cliches: The 405 freeway is the worst; it is less a roadway and more a merciless, elongated parking lot into which no hope of mobility can merge. “The freeway’s congestion problems are legendary, leading to jokes that the road was numbered 405 because traffic moves at ‘four or five’ miles per hour, or because drivers need ‘four or five’ hours to get anywhere,” reads the 405’s Wikipedia entry. (I’ve never heard that joke.)
- 710 Freeway tunnel cost part of a bill to be heard by the state Legislature. With the $40 million environmental analysis yet to be approved, the fight over the extension of the 710 Freeway will spill over into the state Legislature in April, when a bill by a local senator brings the cost and benefits center stage. State Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, wants to force the hand of Metro and Caltrans, the two lead agencies on the 710 completion, by incorporating the 5 Commentsinto the project’s Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement. By changing the status of the June 2015 cost-benefit analysis from a simple addendum to a technical study within the EIR/EIS, it would bring to light hundreds of comments on the cost study made by residents during last year’s public hearings and make them part of the public record. In addition, it would require Caltrans and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to respond in writing to the report, which was labeled faulty by dozens of project opponents.
- Exploring Glendale’s Proposed Freeway Cap Park. A website created by Glendale’s Community Development Department has revealed new details about Space 134, the city’s $150-million plan to build 24 acres of park space atop a trenched stretch of the 134 Freeway. The proposed linear green space, slated for a .7 mile stretch between Central and Balboa Avenues, would span from the city’s Downtown district to adjacent residential neighborhoods to the east. Glendale officials have trumpeted the project’s potential to improve public health, reduce pollution and strengthen transit connections to the rest of Los Angeles County.
- Caltrans seeking approval to implode 15 piers of old Bay Bridge. Following up on the successful implosion of the largest pier on the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge, Caltrans is seeking to demolish 15 remaining piers the same way at a cost of $130 million in what is expected to be the final steps of removing the old bridge. Caltrans will ask the Toll Bridge Oversight Committee, the three-member governing body for the Bay Bridge retrofit project, to approve a contract to a joint venture between construction and engineering firms Kiewit and Manson, Caltrans officials said today.
- Battle of the blueprints: Should I-280 stay or should it go?. Some San Francisco residents are roaring over a study to explore tearing down a portion Interstate Highway 280 in Mission Bay, which could clear the way for a Caltrain extension downtown. But two sets of blueprints obtained by the San Francisco Examiner paint contrasting futures of I-280, including an effort to put the brakes on the proposal decades ago. One set of blueprints, drawn in 1969, planners say shows evidence that to build a new Caltrain extension, I-280 must come down — no questions asked. The other set of plans, two decades old, purportedly shows a road not taken — how the Caltrain extension could be built without the need to tear down I-280.
- Significant Milestone Reached in I-405 Project. The Orange County Transportation Authority is seeking proposals from a shortlist of firms for the design and construction of the I-405 Improvement Project, an important step toward building a better freeway that will improve travel times for everybody driving the corridor between Costa Mesa and the Los Angeles County line. The OCTA Board of Directors at its Monday meeting unanimously approved the criteria for selecting a firm to design and build the freeway improvements, and it approved issuing the final request for proposals.
- Proposed I-680/Highway 4 interchange project among those losing funding. For the foreseeable future, it seems that the I-680/Highway 4 project, along with several other important transportation improvement projects will be stuck moving bumper to bumper. The much needed overhaul to the interchange where Interstate 680 meets Highway 4 in Contra Costa County is hitting a major snag as a result of severe transportation budget cuts. The project, set to hit phase 3 of a total 5 phase plan, will be tentatively scratched until further funding can be allocated for potentially the next five years.
