Day: May 10, 2020

Ah, a new year and what a year it is start out to be. Let’s start with the good: As I was starting on these updates at the end of February 2020, I was out in Madison WI visiting my daughter, walking hither and yon. The end of March 2020 also marks 20 years for the domain cahighways.org, and (if you read through to the bottom of the page), almost 25 years for the posting of highway information on Usenet, or from this sites former home on Pacificnet (which is now long gone). Twenty years. In internet time, that’s like … well, forever.

But 2020 will be memorable for much more than 20 years of California Highways. It will be memorable for another “C”: Coronavirus. Much of my weekdays in March and April have been spent working from home, and my weekends on doing these highway page updates and recording LPs to MP3. That’s because everything else has gone away: going out to theatre; roadtrips and eating out along the road. This is a temporary new normal. But at least I have these pages to keep me busy on the weekends.

Somethings don’t change. Things that were on the horizon in 2019 are still on the horizon. In other words, I’m still trying to figure out how I want the site update to look (although I’m getting closer on the ideas). I do know that we’ll be going to one page per highway, and that I’ll have a translation page so that old links don’t get broken (the Javascript is already written). On the editor front, I am transitioning to BlueGriffon, as it supports the HTML5 tags that I think might be useful for the site in the future (in particular, the <NAV> tag, which may be the basis of future overall site navigation). I think the compatibility problem with the other editor I use (Amaya) was the <!DOCTYPE> tag, where a missing or HTML4 tag caused Amaya to flag valid HTML as invalid thanks to SGML enforcement. We shall see. BlueGriffon’s advantage over Amaya is that it is still maintained; however, I may have to pay to enable some features (should not be a big deal).

I’m also starting to enter the modern era, as of a decade ago, by starting a stylesheet. Progress is also continuing on the project to add memorial images and information to naming information. A side benefit of this will be a bit more standardization of the structure of the individual highway pages. In the future, as part of the move to single pages for each highway, I will use the standardized structure to generate a hyperlinked table of contents to make it easier get to portions of a route. For this conversion process (memorial images, stylesheet standardization), as of when I post this, I’m currently on Route 280.

• Note the First: The non-individual highway pages haven’t been converted yet. If you see odd spacing in lists, this is likely why.
• Note the Second: I’m still looking for pictures of name signs (i.e., signs with the names in the naming sections), and for pictures of some of the people. If you have them, please send me the images or pointers to where I can find the images. This is particularly important for the older names, the seemingly generic place names. For example, if we say that I-215 is called the Riverside Freeway, I want to find a sign that explicitly says “Riverside Freeway” (not just a destination of Riverside). It can be a sign pointing to an on-ramp; a sign on an intersecting freeway, or the freestanding signs that used to be on route segments. But it must have the full name. Surprisingly, for all the picture sites out there, few do a good job of capturing the naming signs. Consider it a challenge. You can mail them to webmaster@cahighways.org.

The Caltrans website rework is still creating problems. Many typical resources and pages are still not available and are still pending remediation. My offer still stands to Caltrans: I will be glad to host any unremediated information — or will find someone to do so if the information doesn’t fit in this site — pending remediation and rehosting on the Caltrans website. I am already hosting the Bridge Logs on my my Caltrans Resources page.

Moving on to the updates, starting with headlines, emailed items, and AAroads forum updates: Updates were made to the following highways, based on my reading of the papers (which are posted to the roadgeeking category at the “Observations Along The Road” and to the California Highways Facebook group) as well as any backed up email changes. I also reviewed the the AAroads forum. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research⁽¹⁾, contributions of information or leads (via direct mail) from Tom Fearer⁽²⁾, Michael McThrow⁽³⁾, Scott Parker⁽⁴⁾, Don Williams⁽⁵⁾, and  Joel Windmiller⁽⁶⁾: Route 1^(1,2), Route 2^(2,4), Route 4^(2,4), I-5^(1,2), LRN 8⁽¹⁾, I-8⁽¹⁾, I-10^(1,2), Route 11⁽¹⁾, Route 12^(2,4), Route 14⁽¹⁾, Route 17^(2,4), Route 20⁽¹⁾, Route 25^(1,2), Route 29⁽¹⁾, Route 30⁽²⁾, Route 36⁽¹⁾, Route 37^(1,2), US 40⁽²⁾, Route 42⁽¹⁾, Route 46⁽¹⁾, Route 48^(1,2), US 50⁽¹⁾, Route 52⁽²⁾, Route 58⁽¹⁾, Route 60⁽¹⁾, Route 63⁽¹⁾, Route 64⁽²⁾, Route 65^(2,3), Route 71⁽⁵⁾, I-80^(1,2), Route 84^(1,4), Route 86⁽²⁾, Route 89^(1,2), Route 91⁽¹⁾, Route 92⁽¹⁾, Route 93⁽²⁾, Route 96⁽²⁾, Route 99^(1,2,4,6), Route 100^(2,4), US 101^(1,2,4), Route 111^(1,2), Route 116^(2,4), Route 118^(2,4), Route 122⁽²⁾, Route 125⁽¹⁾, Route 126⁽⁵⁾, Route 132⁽¹⁾, Route 146⁽²⁾, Route 154⁽¹⁾, Route 156⁽¹⁾, Route 157⁽²⁾, Route 162⁽¹⁾, Route 171⁽²⁾, Route 180^(1,2), Route 181⁽²⁾, Route 183⁽¹⁾, Route 192⁽¹⁾, Route 196⁽²⁾, US 199⁽²⁾, Route 210^(1,2,4), Route 211^(2), Route 220⁽¹⁾, Route 239⁽⁴⁾, Route 241⁽¹⁾, Route 249⁽²⁾, Route 251⁽²⁾, Route 252⁽²⁾, Route 256⁽³⁾, Route 281⁽²⁾, US 395⁽¹⁾, I-405⁽¹⁾, US 466⁽²⁾, I-580⁽¹⁾, I-880⁽¹⁾, I-905⁽¹⁾, County Sign Route J22⁽²⁾, County Sign Route J29⁽²⁾, County Sign Route J35⁽²⁾, County Sign Route J132⁽²⁾.

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