🛣 Headlines About California Highways – November 2023

November. The month where you start to get sick of pumpkin spice, and wonder why they are playing December holiday music so frippen early. Or is it just me. But one more month, and 2023 2023 will be in the history books. Then comes the election year of 2024. Oh. Boy.

November saw us recording two more episodes of the podcast; of these, one has been released and one is waiting to be edited. I may edit it during the Annual Computer Security Conference (ACSAC) next week, or it may be delayed a bit more. The Route 1 scripts are written; Route 2 will be written between Christmas and New Years.  As always, you can keep up with the show at the podcast’s forever home at https://www.caroutebyroute.org , the show’s page on Spotify for Podcasters, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcaster or via the RSS feeds (CARxR, Spotify for Podcasters) . The following episodes have been posted this month:

• CARxR 2.03: Route 1 – Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.  In Episode 2.03 of California Highways: Route by Route, we continue our exploration of Route 1 by exploring everything about the segment in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, from Solromar / Malibu at the edge of Ventura County to near Guadalupe in Santa Barbara County. We’ll go over the history of this segment of the route, the history of the route through various communities including Malibu, Oxnard, Ventura, Lompoc/Vandenberg and Orcutt. We’ll go over the freeway plans, discuss relinquishments, names, and some current plans. (Spotify Link)

Additionally, the Updates to California Highways for September and October are now posted to the California Highways site. I’ll be working on the next round of updates between Christmas and New Years. Lastly, for those that use iPod Classics, I’ve figured out (finally) how to mirror my iTunes Library to my Android phone. Might not be a big deal to you, but it is to me.

One last plug: For those in the cybersecurity field: Registration for the Annual Computer Security Conference open, but you only have two days. We start in Austin on Sunday.

Well, you should now be up to date. Here are the headlines that I found about California’s highways for November:

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

• ＄ Napa Silverado Trail roundabout project moving forward (Napa Valley Register). Napa city officials have given staff the go-ahead on project approval and environmental evaluation for a roundabout project that will eventually replace a traffic-clogging five-way intersection east of downtown. The project to replace the current crossing with two roundabouts linking the Silverado Trail, Third Street, Coombsville Road and East Avenue won City Council approval in 2017, but has been slow to get off the ground. A partnership between the city and Caltrans, the project was slated for a 2022 groundbreaking and 2024 completion, but work was delayed in 2021. The city’s public works director, Julie Lucido, said at the time that funding took longer than the city and state expected, in part because the price increased from the original projection of $8.2 million to between $11 million and $20 million.
• Past Visions of Los Angeles’ Transportation Future: 1940s (Metro’s Primary Resources). The last 100 years of transit and transportation planning in Los Angeles hold stories full of challenges and opportunities, successes and failures, and some surprises, little known “firsts,” and enduring urban legends. We are taking a look back — decade by decade — at key resources from our collection to contextualize the seminal traffic, transit, and transportation plans for the region in order to provide greater understanding of how we arrived where we are today. The economic uncertainty of the 1930s gave way to a decade marked by a Second World War and continued rapid growth of Los Angeles. Military bases and ports serving the Pacific Theater in WWII, along with a burgeoning aerospace industry, primed Los Angeles for further growth — and all the planning, construction, operations and consequences that come with it. Following the conceptualization of the “freeway” as a new type of parkway in 1933, the opening of the region’s first “freeway” (the Arroyo Seco Parkway) in 1939 set the stage for a decade of numerous, extensive studies and plans for a highway network serving the rapidly growing and densifying County. One early effort was the July, 1941 Report on the Feasibility of a Freeway Along the Channel of the Los Angeles River from the San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles – Long Beach Harbors.
• What the Golden Gate Is (Finally) Doing About Suicides (The New York Times (shared)). It was May 27, 1937, the opening day for a stunning new suspension bridge across a gap in the California coastline known as the Golden Gate. Before cars were allowed on the crossing, an estimated 200,000 people celebrated between the bridge’s four-foot-high rails, more than 200 feet above the water. Doris Madden, 11, was there with her parents. It was one of her favorite days of her childhood, a story she told until the end of her life. About 78 years later, in 2015, Madden’s 15-year-old grandson, Jesse Madden-Fong, was dropped off at his high school in San Francisco.
• Metro, Caltrans Announce I-5 Full Closure in Santa Clarita (SCVNews.com). The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the California Department of Transportation will fully close both northbound and southbound directions of Interstate 5 Golden State Freeway from the State Route 14 Antelope Valley Freeway to Calgrove Boulevard 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 4 to 8 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 5, to demolish the Weldon Canyon Road bridge. Motorists should expect delays and consider taking alternate routes during these closure periods.
• Projects Chosen for Climate Adaptation Funding (Streetsblog California). California Transportation Commission staff recommended fifteen projects to receive $309.2 million from the Local Transportation Climate Adaptation Program (LTCAP). The program was created in 2022 in response to concerns about the vulnerability of transportation to climate hazards including sea level rise, flooding, fire, and the like. The money comes from California – $148 million, allocated under S.B. 198 – and the federal PROTECT formula program established under IIJA. That program, Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT), provides another $252.4 million over five years.
• Construction Confusion: Drivers encounter multiple projects on Sacramento freeways (Fox 40). If you had to use a movie title to describe Sacramento freeway construction, you might call it “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” The Caltrans website lists three dozen current projects at various stages in District 3, which includes much of the Sacramento region. Many of the projects involve freeway widening and repaving. That describes what is happening on Interstate 80 over the Yolo Causeway between Davis and Sacramento: a $280 million project with a target finish date of December 2027. There is also a $39 million dollar widening project along Interstate 5 in Sacramento from Arena Boulevard to the Yolo County line, scheduled for a summer 2025 completion.

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