Pogo Sticks?
Posted on 12/28/2008 1:04:49 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Color the brake lights red as the column of cars backs up from the Caldecott Tunnel, the often bottled-up gateway between Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
Color drivers' moods red as the congestion worsens over a span of 45 years.
Many drivers are looking forward to relief from a long-planned $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, but a lawsuit by Alameda County neighborhood groups and a bicycling advocacy organization could delay the project scheduled to begin in the summer and finish in 2014.
A ruling on the lawsuit is expected soon from Alameda County Superior Court judge Frank Roesch.
Some Contra Costa residents and political leaders called the lawsuit a selfish and frivolous road block to obvious traffic relief.
"Will it help the environment if you keep traffic moving at 2 mph and spewing pollution," said Jim Sconza, a Lafayette resident who has driven the tunnel for nearly 50 years. "I'm very frustrated It seems Southern California can get highway projects done, but in Northern California we get stuck with years of delays and frivolous lawsuits."
Groups suing said their challenge isn't about stopping the tunnel expansion but getting Caltrans to recognize and provide relief for adverse effects of the project. Those include increasing noise for Highway 24 neighbors, adding more traffic to crowded streets near the freeway, and possibly inducing some people to abandon BART and return to commuting in autos as the tunnel becomes more free flowing.
"We're not trying to stop the project, but make it a better project," said Robert Rayburn, executive director of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, one of the plaintiffs. "One problem with this project is that it's been just about moving cars, and doesn't consider other types of mobility."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Self canceling phrase...
We had this problem in Indianapolis. They ran I70 through residential areas without compensation to the people within the blastzone of the highway.
When they did the Super 70 project it was just more of the same, but less traffic (I noticed on a trip through the area since nobody I know lives next to the highway anymore).
People love their highways ~ they despise the people they damage with them.
I've often thought that if the folks living beside an Interstate quality road were given hunting licenses that qualified them to just pick off every ten thousandth driver with a high powered rifle from their rooftops that would change minds quick.
Make it all legal of course ~ no vigilante stuff ~ just a simple license like you might get to take deer or other wild game.
Fundamentally the public attitude as expressed by public officials responsible for constructing and maintaining these roads in residential areas is pretty primitive and we need to take drastic measures to bring them up to civilized standards ~ like PAY PEOPLE to move.
aka Communist Thugs on two wheels...
Also they will need a flag man walking in front of them to warn others of their coming, so the can get the tomatoes ready:-)
Pogo Sticks?
This is an early example of where all the money will go in Obama’s wet dream of spending on infrastructure.
Every bridge in NW Cal had to upgraded to provide a kiddie lane. It cost Billions and caused traffic delays and the funds came from the road tax...
Let them bicycle all they want wherever and whenever they want.
In reality bikes have nothing to do with leftists attempting (once again) to run (and ruin) everyone else's life.
Seek professional help. And that isn’t a joke.
Two things. Obviously you’ve never lived next to an Interstate highway. Secondly, you are totally devoid of humor that has to do with your use of your automobile.
Think how less expensive those bridges would have been (in the long run) if they'd been built originally as pedestrian accessible fixtures.
Two things.
1) No, I made sure to obtain an education in the classroom and real-world sense ensuring that I would be able to choose housing away from such thoroughfares.
2) Your ‘joke’ is the item devoid of humor. Your reference was to voluntary shooting of total strangers. What a knee-slapper.
BWAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!
The people in the path really didn't have much choice about it.
Plus, virtually all interstate highways that run through residential districts are operated improperly.
There is no public interest in changing the situation.
I have actually lived next to an interstate highway, as well as train tracks, and I got used to it. Admittedly, I haven’t lived near them when there was construction going on.
How, in your view, would you operate an interstate “properly?”
I saw they had a fire there once. I couldn't help but observe that this "wilderness area" had a brushfire in the early 1990s that swept down and destroyed over 3,000 homes nearby.
Are you from Los Angeles perhaps?
No doubt that would heighten public interest in how and where their highways are routed. Tightening 5th Amendment standards a bit I'd pay triple the highest market price in the last 20 years for any residential property within 1 mile of the highway and allow those folks to move out with dignity.
One of the things the black activists who first opposed downtown Interstates didn't notice was that the preliminary routing that took those highways through old innercity neighborhoods had their start out in the suburbs where planners sought to avoid higher priced commercial property.
Basically corporate interests pushed a good deal of the environmental burden these highways created off on strictly residential areas filled with women, children and their own employees ~
Oh, yeah, and stop lights every 1/2 mile through any area with residentially zoned property.
There's no comparing it to any other highway anywhere except maybe the Grand Trunk in India.
Besides, there are plenty of such bridges that should allow pedestrian access AND THEY DON'T!
Pedestrians are not allowed on freeways in Calif...
Probably ought to change your rules ~ you know, kind of like the rules in California's cattel country where the cows have the right of way!
In other words, it would cease being an interstate, which is apparently what you have in mind. I’d hate to see what you’d do to the railroad tracks near where I used to live.
Dude, I-270 in Gaithersburg is plenty busy. However, you are right, the traffic is actually quieter when it jams up.
They've since been moved out away from the city.
Again, all the designers have to do to solve the problem is to pay for the amount of right of way that's really needed. Then no one will care.
The point I'm making is that the drivers on that road should not benefit from my discomfort. Rather, it should be the other way around 'cause I was there first.
Wonder if they destroyed my favorite (1968-ish) parking spot with the third bore.
Orinda side, west bound; take the access road, and curve up and over the tunnel entrance. Large, secluded parking area to, uhh, erm, watch the pretty lights of the traffic.
To leave, continue around, down opposite side access road, and back onto east bound lanes.
Think so? Just ask all the folks whose homes are bulldozed to create your "sound buffer"...
Road right of ways should not be stolen through failure to purchase sufficient property to accommodate the way the road will be operated.
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