Category Archives: Construction

Phoenix without freeways?

In the 1970s, Arizonans resoundingly voted “NO” to completing Interstate 10 through downtown Phoenix. But that’s because I-10 would have been a ten-story tall freeway bridge through the north of downtown. But the “NO” vote canceled all new freeways, including finishing Interstate 10 coast to coast.

Thinking Ahead: CA-210

It looks like Caltrans thought ahead for this 2002 project. That’s the year the state of California extended the 210 freeway from the 57 freeway to I-15 in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The new freeway replaced Highland Avenue, which became a frontage road. As I explored historic aerial photography on Google Earth, I discovered that Caltrans […]

Mountain View Corridor: Another Vanishing Neighborhood

A new freeway is slowly appearing on Salt Lake County, Utah’s west side.  The Mountain View Corridor, SR-85, will parallel Interstate 15 from roughly Salt Lake International Airport south to Saratoga Springs, and possibly one day, west of Utah Lake to Payson. It’s one of the few large-scale, non-tolled urban freeway projects going on in […]

Hoover Dam Bypass

I recently visited the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s permanant home at the California Science Center at USC. I’m a child of the 80s, my father worked in aerospace, and the ole’ reusable shuttles were easily among my largest childhood idols. As I walked around Endeavour’s hangar, plaques line the walls, showing every shuttle mission NASA ever […]

Loop 303 Flyover Progress

Innovative Our friends over in the Valley of the Sun are making great headway with the new Loop 303 freeway, which wraps around Phoenix’s north-western suburbs, and connects here with Interstate 10: It looks like they’re not messing around! That’s a full-fledged stack interchange they appear to be building, even though it may be decades […]

Mountain View Corridor: More Demolition

This is probably the first time since the 1960s that Salt Lake County, Utah has seen serious demolition for a transportation project. In another post, I show some photos of a vanishing neighborhood between 4100 South and 3500 South in West Valley City.  Here are some pictures of a neighborhood just south of 4100, along Timber […]

New: Galena Park Bridge

There’s a series projects which demonstrate some good long-term thinking in Draper, Utah. When UTA built its Frontrunner commuter rail line, it built this overpass even though there isn’t a road for yards around (I’d say miles, but there are many roads within a mile).  Good thing, too, since it’s a looooooong drive around (red).  In […]

Mountain View Corridor: Bills Drive

It appears the first major demolition has begun for the future Mountain View Corridor freeway (SR-85). I just drove down Bills Drive a few weeks ago and there was a tree-lined street of landscaped, established 1970s-80s tract homes.  Everyone is gone now.  The photo doesn’t do justice of just how eerie this street feels now, […]