Month: May 2022

Another month comes to an end, and that means it is time for headlines. But before I jump into the headlines, I want to highlight a few other notable things that have happened over the last month:

• Tom Fearer of Gribblenation and I have started a podcast on California Highways. It is called California Highways: Route by Route and you can find our first full sample episode at the episode’s page on caroutebyroute.org, on the episode’s page at Anchor.FM; or an almost all major podcast platforms. This sample episode is about Route 105. We hope to start Season 1 sometime in late June.
• The latest updates to the California Highways web page are up. This includes the review of the SHOPP and the STIP, as well as some interesting upcoming legislation.
• The primary elections in California are less than two weeks away. I believe in being an informed voter, and so examine every candidate on my sample ballot, and write up a summary. This election, this process took me almost 20 hours to do. You can find my summary here; it links to the other pages where I go through all the candidates that led to my decision. I don’t ask (or expect) you’ll agree with my conclusions, but perhaps my research will help you be better informed. What’s most important, however, is that you VOTE. Voting affects the highways and our state in so many ways, and this is your chance to influence the process.

May has been a tiring and stressful month for me. I’ve been dealing with medical problems for me and the continued recovery of my wife from a fall last November; and I’ve had loads of writing projects (the election, podcast, and highway pages as noted above, plus a number of theatre reviews). I’ve had little time to destress, and my main avenue of de-stressing (listening to music) is impacted by the medical problem (ear issues). Let’s hope things go better in June.

But you don’t care about any of that, do you. You care about the headlines. So here are the headlines about California’s highways for May. The headline list seems to be getting smaller–I’m finding less articles about significant road work (I’m not that interested in simple resurfacing), and more articles about transit and rail. I think that’s the direction things are going currently: increase the number of people per vehicle on current roads (as opposed to capacity for more vehicles), and increase broader transit options. But here’s what I found:

Key

[Ħ Historical information | ＄ Paywalls, ＄＄ really obnoxious paywalls, and ∅ other annoying restrictions. I’m no longer going to list the paper names, as I’m including them in the headlines now. Note: For ＄ paywalls, sometimes the only way is incognito mode, grabbing the text before the paywall shows, and pasting into an editor. ]

Highway Headlines

• I-15 Exit Ramps At Clinton Keith Getting Wrong-Way Driver Prevention (Lake Elsinore, CA Patch). In an effort to prevent wrong-way driver crashes on Inland Empire freeways, Caltrans District 8 has identified priority exit ramps that need attention, and Clinton Keith Road at Interstate 15 in Wildomar is on the list. On Tuesday, the north- and southbound Clinton Keith Road offramps will be closed at I-15 so that Caltrans crews can install wrong-way prevention “enhancements,” according to the state agency.
• Wildlife Undercrossing In Santa Cruz Breaks Ground (Santa Cruz, CA Patch). A project is now underway that will create a wildlife undercrossing beneath state Highway 17 to provide a route for mountain lions and other wildlife to travel safely between two large areas of habitat — both of which are separated by four lanes of the busy traffic corridor. Groundbreaking took place Friday for the Laurel Curve Wildlife Undercrossing in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It will connect 460 acres of land on both sides of Highway 17 that has been preserved in a conservation easement by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County.
• Last two-lane stretches of Highway 70 now being widened to four lanes (Chico Enterprise-Record). When roadwork currently underway on Highway 70 is complete, Chico will no longer be the largest city in California that isn’t accessed by a four-lane highway. While Highway 70 still has to wind through Marysville, the two projects running north and south from the Yuba/Butte county line will wrap up 16 years of work, costing in excess of $500 million. “I’m really glad it’s being done,” said Butte County Supervisor Bill Connelly. “I look forward to getting our people in and out of town and down to Sacramento safely.”
• California Allocates More Than Half Billion Dollars for Projects (Construction Equipment Guide). Senate Bill (SB) 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, accounts for $317 million, more than half of the funding. “The CTC’s welcome decision to green light more than half a billion dollars to maintain and repair California’s aging transportation infrastructure is not only in keeping with our time-tested “fix-it-first” strategy, but also represents another big step to build and maintain a transportation system that serves all who travel in California, whether by foot, bicycle, bus, train or automobile,” said Steven Keck, acting director of Caltrans. Projects that were recently approved include:
• Hwy 1 Toro Creek Bridge to be replaced near Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo Tribune). Drivers and cyclists, get ready for another lengthy construction project on busy Highway 1, this one replacing the northbound lanes of the Toro Creek Bridge. The two-span, ocean-view bridge is near the Dog Beach area north of the Morro Bay strand area, and about a half mile south of Old Creek Road. Traffic on the scenic highway will be reduced to a single lane in each direction during the two-phase project, which is expected to continue into the spring of 2023. Signs will notify drivers and cyclists about the changes; detours will be established for bicyclists.
  Pasadena and Caltrans Reach Agreement to Relinquish 710 Freeway Stub to City (Streetsblog Los Angeles). When I worked for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign a decade and a half ago, my boss used to tell me that a proposed freeway project was never really dead; that the best we could do is defund it and make it politically unpalatable to bring back. I learned this lesson the hard way when a New Jersey road project I helped get defunded was presumed “dead,” then was revived and built with funding from the Obama-era American Rescue and Recovery Act. But if the 710 Freeway “gap” project, which Streetsblog readers voted to dub the “Big Dig” over a decade ago may finally be dead enough that it can’t rise and terrorize residents of Los Angeles, Pasadena and South Pasadena. The North 710 Freeway project was slated to spend $6+ billion dollars for tunnels under these cities, until overwhelming opposition led the Metro board to cancel the project back in 2017.

Read More …

Whew! In between everything else I’ve been doing, I’ve also been working on updates to the highway pages. The latest batch is done. Here’s the change log:

The original plan was for this update to cover March and April. It stretched mostly into May, due to a variety of factors: a number of backed up theatre reviews, an entire weekend lost to writing my detailed sample ballot analysis, and various caregiving and (of lately) non-COVID health issues. Alas, some of those are still ongoing. What did you say? I couldn’t hear you. Sigh.

One major delaying factor was the podcast. Yes, Tom Fearer and I have started a new podcast series that we’re calling “California Highways: Route by Route“. It will be a joint production of California Highways and Gribblenation. The eventual plan is to have one or more episodes for each numbered highway in the state (just like I do on this site), combining the information here such as legislative changes, highway history, naming history, and major projects with the extensive historical research Tom has done in the archives, and on his trips on the road. The first season will be background, going through the history of California Highways in a broad sense, explaining highway numbering and naming, and explaining the governance and regulatory processes and organizations that bring us highways. The second season will start with the highways proper, with multiple episodes devoted to long or significant route (for example, it looks like Season 2 will focus on Route 1 and Route 2, and there will be entire seasons on Route 99 and US 101. I expect this to be a retirement project for me—I’ve plotted out all the highways, and it looks like there will be at least 35 seasons (12 or so episodes a season, with initially an episode monthly)! Right now, a teaser episode is up and we’ll be putting up a full sample episode by early June, as I get more familiar with the audio editing tools. late June or July will bring the first real episode. So watch for “California Highways: Route by Route” on our anchor.fm site; at its forever home at the California Highways: Route by Route website, or in all the traditional podcast venues (and it better be, as I use the namesake device—an iPod Classic—to listen to my podcasts (no streaming here)).

Updates were made to the following highways, based on my reading of the (virtual) papers in March and April 2022 (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 (Ꜳ). This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research^(ℱ), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or ꜲRoads) from ConcreteBob⁽²⁾, Tom Fearer⁽³⁾, Cameron Kaiser⁽⁴⁾, kernals12⁽⁵⁾, Plutonic Panda⁽⁶⁾, rschen7754⁽⁷⁾, Dale Sanderson⁽⁸⁾: Route 1^(ℱ), Route 4^(ℱ), I-5⁽³⁾, Route 7⁽³⁾, I-10⁽⁶⁾, Route 19⁽³⁾, Route 20^(ℱ), Route 25^(ℱ), Route 26^(ℱ,3), Route 33⁽³⁾, Route 38⁽³⁾, US 40⁽³⁾, Route 41^(ℱ), LRN 43⁽³⁾, Route 46^(ℱ), Route 47^(ℱ,3), US 50^(ℱ), Route 58^(ℱ), Route 60^(3,4), Route 67^(ℱ),  Route 70⁽³⁾, Route 76^(ℱ,3), Route 78^(3,7), I-80^(ℱ),  Route 86^(ℱ), Route 99^(ℱ,3), US 101^(ℱ), Route 103^(ℱ,3), Route 107⁽³⁾, I-110^(ℱ,3), Route 111^(ℱ), Route 126⁽⁵⁾, Route 135^(ℱ), Route 145^(ℱ), Route 148 (Capitol Southeast Connector)⁽²⁾, Route 152^(ℱ), Route 164⁽³⁾, Route 187⁽³⁾, Route 188⁽³⁾, Route 213⁽³⁾, LRN 231^(ℱ,3), Route 243⁽³⁾, US 466⁽⁸⁾, I-710^(ℱ).
(Source: private email, Highway headline posts through the April Headline post, AARoads through May 27, 2022)

Update the state highway numbering page based on observations from Tom Fearer. Put in a new header logo, courtesy of the graphic skills of J. Scott Hayden, moderator of the California Roads, Signs, and Maps: A Collection of Old & New Facebook Group.

Added a link to Gribblenation’s Oahu Highways page. As a reminder: If you have a regional page (state, country), please let me know so I can add it to the links directory. Yes, this is old-fashioned in these days of search engines, but it still does serve to increase the visibility and ranking of all sites.

Reviewed the Pending Legislation page, based on the California Legislature site. As usual, I recommend to every Californian that they visit the legislative website regularly and see what their legis-critters are doing. As many people are unfamiliar with how the legislature operates (and why there are so many “non-substantive changes” and “gut and amend” bills), I’ve added the legislative calendar to the end of the Pending Legislation page. No bills were passed during this review period (although one naming resolution, SCR 39, was sent to the Governor). A number of Assembly Bills had their non-substantial contents replaced with something substantial—most notable was a bill that will authorize relinquishment of Route 107 in Redondo Beach. Also notable was a new resolution to remove the designation of the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway (including removal of all signs).

Reviewed the online agenda of the California Coastal Commission. I reviewed the March, April, and May agendas for the Coastal Commission meetings. No actions rose to the level of Highway Page significance.

As the March 2022 CTC approved the newest iteration of the SHOPP and the STIP, after processing the CTC agenda items, I went through the SHOPP and STIP to ensure that any new items that rose to the level of interest were captured in the pages. From the SHOPP, updates were made to: Route 4, Route 14, Route 24, Route 49, Route 96, Route 99, Route 110, and Route 246. The updates to the STIP give a lot less detail (for example, there are no postmiles nor detailed descriptions of the changes)—you’re lucky to get a title, county, route, and project number. Based on what I could figure out from the STIP, updates were made to I-10, Route 57, US 395, I-680. Note that a number of line items appeared to reference a postmile, but never indicated the route. My guess is that the STIP items will eventually make their way into the SHOPP (especially as they have PPNOs).

I checked California Transportation Commission page for the results of the March and April 2022 meetings of the California Transportation Commission (although April was a one-day meeting and had no items of interest as the focus was rail and transit). As always, note that I tend not to track items that do not impact these pages — i.e., pavement rehabilitation or replacement, landscaping, drainage, culverts, roadside facilities, charging stations, or other things that do not impact the routing or history, unless they are really significant. As such, the following items were of interest: