midvision (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} midvision) wrote,@ 2005-02-08 00:16:00 |
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Interstate 280, Near Hillsborough, California.
Standard practice for I-280 is to drive it as fast as possible and try to forget that Silicon Valley is 40 miles from San Francisco. This freeway is designed specifically for this mode of travel: it is high capacity (6 to 10 lanes -- local legend says it's wide enough to land a 747), has extremely limited access (very few exits (including 19 miles of no exits), so through traffic is maximized and local traffic is minimized, in addition to reduced merge-in/merge-out slow-downs), and strict restriction on commercial traffic (it's not just that they take up space, but that they take up space with vastly different parameters than cars do -- in part due to physics and in part due to the statewide speed limit of 55mi/hr on vehicles over 40,000GW). Of course, in driving this way, you miss some neat stuff. There are the obvious things like it being fairly rural (by SFBA standards), and that it spends a good deal of distance hugging the edge of the San Andreas fault scarp, and that the lakes in the valley are pretty. And then there's the more subtle things.
This is Caltrans Bridge #35-199, as seen from below at Crystal Springs Rd. The visual design pretty much screams 1965, and it was in fact built in 1967. The bridge takes I-280 across San Mateo Creek Gorge, a narrow but deep break in the mountains of the Peninsula. So significant is this break that when expanding the Crystal Springs Reservoirs, a dam had to be built to keep the lake in. (That would be the weird thing in the distance to the right/west.)
The aerial is cool too. Also note the I-280/CA-92 junction just to the south; another classic 1960s design. (Terraserver finally got the 'urban area' photos for California loaded a few months ago; I was way more pleased by this than is probably healthy.)
Standard practice for I-280 is to drive it as fast as possible and try to forget that Silicon Valley is 40 miles from San Francisco. This freeway is designed specifically for this mode of travel: it is high capacity (6 to 10 lanes -- local legend says it's wide enough to land a 747), has extremely limited access (very few exits (including 19 miles of no exits), so through traffic is maximized and local traffic is minimized, in addition to reduced merge-in/merge-out slow-downs), and strict restriction on commercial traffic (it's not just that they take up space, but that they take up space with vastly different parameters than cars do -- in part due to physics and in part due to the statewide speed limit of 55mi/hr on vehicles over 40,000GW). Of course, in driving this way, you miss some neat stuff. There are the obvious things like it being fairly rural (by SFBA standards), and that it spends a good deal of distance hugging the edge of the San Andreas fault scarp, and that the lakes in the valley are pretty. And then there's the more subtle things.
This is Caltrans Bridge #35-199, as seen from below at Crystal Springs Rd. The visual design pretty much screams 1965, and it was in fact built in 1967. The bridge takes I-280 across San Mateo Creek Gorge, a narrow but deep break in the mountains of the Peninsula. So significant is this break that when expanding the Crystal Springs Reservoirs, a dam had to be built to keep the lake in. (That would be the weird thing in the distance to the right/west.)
The aerial is cool too. Also note the I-280/CA-92 junction just to the south; another classic 1960s design. (Terraserver finally got the 'urban area' photos for California loaded a few months ago; I was way more pleased by this than is probably healthy.)
