And with that, October is done. Only two months left in the strange year that is and soon will have been 2020. I think few don’t want 2020 to be overwith. Folks are counting the days. Me? I’m counting the headlines. Only two more headline posts left in the year. So while your little one are pestering you for candy because they aren’t out walking the streets, here are some headlines to keep you busy so you can tell them to come back later.
[💰 Paywalls and 🚫 other annoying restrictions: LAT/LA Times; SJMN/Mercury News; OCR/Orange County Register; VSG/Visalia Sun Gazette; RDI/Ridgecrest Daily Independent; PE/Press Enterprise; TDT/Tahoe Daily Tribune; SFC/San Francisco Chronicle; MODBEE/Modesto Bee; SACBEE/Sacramento Bee; NVR/Napa Valley Register; DB/Daily Breeze; LADN/Los Angeles Daily News; SDUT/San Diego Union Tribune; RBDN/Red Bluff Daily News; SONN/Sonoma News; LBPT/Long Beach Press Telegram; PD/Press Democrat]
- 💰/LAT Long Beach prepares to open a $1.47-billion bridge. Fog hovers just above the new Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach. Workers are scattered over a job site cluttered with traffic cones, construction vehicles and a few small cranes, and Duane Kenagy is giving a tour. Since signing on as executive director for the project in 2014, Kenagy has grown accustomed to playing docent to an international cast of visiting politicians, students, bureaucrats and media. Barring delays, the bridge will open Monday, and cars and trucks — by some estimates, 60,000 a day, now rattling across the old bridge just a few feet away — will sail over this gleaming new span connecting the 710 Freeway and downtown Long Beach to the nation’s busiest port complex.
- The new long beach bridge: Gerald Desmond bridge is being replaced. The bridge has served its purpose. Half a century after it was built, the Gerald Desmond is still able to serve the City of Long Beach in southern California but it has come to be called “functionally obsolete” by engineers. The stress caused by the higher number of cars and trucks that have come to use it as a result of the port’s growing importance to the U.S. economy has taken its toll on the massive structure. In fact, 15% of all imports that arrive to the country as cargo travels across the bridge, which connects the city with Terminal Island where several of the port’s large tenants are located.
- $1.47 Billion New Bridge, With 100-Year Lifespan, Opens In Long Beach. A new bridge that will connect Long Beach to the world officially opens Friday with a lyover of military planes, a boat parade, and a procession of zero-emission and low-emission cargo trucks. The six-lane, cable-stayed bridge replaces the Gerald Desmond Bridge and will be a major regional highway connector as well as improve the movement of cargo.
- Metro Plans to Take Out 200+ Downey Homes to Widen 5 and 605 Freeways. The full details are not yet entirely clear, but Metro and Caltrans are finalizing plans to widen portions of the 605 and 5 Freeways – and the project will destroy hundreds of homes, primarily in the city of Downey. Metro calls the project the “I-605 Corridor Improvement Project” (605 CIP) though the project includes portions of other freeways: the 5, 10, 60, and 105. The project would touch on nine San Gabriel Valley cities – Baldwin Park, Downey, City of Industry, El Monte, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Santa Fe Springs, South El Monte, and Whittier, as well the unincorporated county areas Avocado Heights, Rose Hills, West Whittier/Los Nietos.
- 💰/SDUT Caltrans tries again to tame the roller coaster ride that is San Diego’s Route 52. In Southern California, where the car has long been king, completion of a new section of freeway can be cause for celebration. So it was on two summer days in 1987 and 1988, when officials held four-hour parties in the center of soon-to-open stretches of state Route 52 in Kearny Mesa. There were refreshments, live music, dancing, military exhibits, parades — mini-carnivals, minus the thrill rides.
- Completion of Iconic New Bridge Celebrated in Long Beach. A sparkling parade of green trucks, a dramatic vintage aircraft flyover and fireboat sprays christened today’s ceremonial opening of the new bridge at the Port of Long Beach, reaffirming the region’s importance to international shipping and heralding in an iconic structure that dramatically shifts the Southern California skyline. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201002005503/en/
