Day: May 26, 2014

It’s been far too long since the last update. There’s really no excuse, other than the lack of time and lack of urgency. Weekends have been filled with other interests and chores, making it difficult to find a day or two to sit down in front of a screen all day to do the updates. These updates were started while on vacation — what else should I do while I sit in the hotel room while the wife sleeps in the morning? In some ways, it’s a throwback to college days, where I would always do programming projects while sitting in the hotel room at the beach in Maui. But then work interfered… and so I’m finishing them over Memorial Day weekend. So let’s get to it.

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May has been a busy month, and I’ve spent a lot of it planning to work on the highway pages… but not succeeding due to other tasks to address. So here are some highway headlines for May, hopefully followed immediately by a highway update:

• Caltrans: Alternative B still best Centennial path. Alternative B through the Westpark neighborhood remains Caltrans’ preferred and least expensive route for Centennial Corridor, the controversial freeway link between Highway 58 and the Westside Parkway — but would require the demolition of far more homes and businesses than previously thought. With its release Friday of the project’s draft Environmental Impact Report, the state transportation agency found Alternative B would improve traffic throughout metropolitan Bakersfield — but as currently planned would require the demolition of 200 single-family homes, 110 multiple-family structures and 121 commercial buildings.
• New Bay Bridge defect could be trouble in earthquake. Steel rods that anchor the Bay Bridge eastern span’s massive main cable have shifted since they were installed and are now perilously close to sharp-edged plates inside the belly of the new bridge, a problem Caltrans acknowledges could take months and millions of dollars to fix.Caltrans engineers say more than 200 high-strength rods could be jerked in a major earthquake into those sharp edges, risking damage to the main cable and possibly threatening the bridge’s stability.
• 405-Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project: it’s more than adding the HOV lane.  As most of your know, the new northbound HOV lane on the 405 freeway between the 10 and 101 is opening Friday. There will finally be an HOV on the north side of the freeway to match the one on the southbound side that was completed in 2002.
• Half-Mile Segment of San Fernando Blvd. in Burbank to Close Permanently. A half-mile segment of San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank will close permanently tomorrow, May 20, 2014. It will be closed before the morning commute. The closed portion is the segment that crosses under I-5 between the Lincoln Street off-ramp on the east side of the freeway and the Lincoln Street/Victory Place intersection on the west.
• New Route 210 freeway interchange planned. Plans have been announced for a new interchange on the 210 freeway. Spokesman Tim Watkins at the San Bernardino Associated Governments (SANBAG) says the interchange at Pepper Avenue will help meet future growth in that part of Rialto.
• $541 Million for CA Highways. The California Transportation Commission has allocated $1.3 billion in transportation funding, including $541 million to implement California’s “fix it first” strategy for preserving and maintaining California’s 50,000 lane miles of highways.