For Christmas, I got a dash cam. I’ve been taping silly dash cam videos of drivers the past few months and compiling them onto YouTube. I think maybe 30 people have watched. Until last week, when a newspaper reporter wrote to say they wanted to write a quick blurb on their web site, with a […]
Category Archives: Blog
09
Dec
Dec
I’m exploring a site along Provo’s 500 West, which a SafetyAnalyst project identifies as one of the most crash-prone stretches of road in the county. SafetyAnalyst allows a transportation researcher to combine data and other analytical tools to identify roadway segments and nodes which are statistically more dangerous than others, controlling for many other factors. […]
08
Dec
Dec
The signs all went up today, making Salt Lake City home to America’s fastest urban interstates. Traditionally, urban freeways are 65 miles per hour (or 55 in cities with really twisty road geometry). As far as I’m aware, no state has ever allowed a DOT to raise urban freeways to higher speeds, until now. The […]
07
Dec
Dec
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 […]
06
Dec
Dec
I didn’t want to get in the way, so I waited until all the heavy equipment was parked for the day and hopped the “Road Closed” sign. Here’s the 500 West extension, facing southbound toward Westside Connector: Here’s where I approached the corner of 500 West and Westside Connector. The base material looks rather interesting. […]
23
Nov
Nov
In retrospect, I wish I’d put more time into getting a girlfriend. Oh well. Over fifteen years ago, I was in junior high school. Being borderline-A.D.D. and super stoked to get a driver license, I began drawing “cities.” I put the word “city” in scare quotes, because I really drew freeway interchanges and complicated intersections. […]
21
Nov
Nov
Ouch! That’s what happens Shaq gets distracted in his Porche 911 convertible and forgets to duck. I phoned it into the city engineer as soon as I saw it. The phone went to voicemail. So I called the police dispatcher, and she says they’d already gotten a lot of calls about this already this morning. I […]
02
Oct
Oct
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 […]
02
Jul
Jul
California has America’s least-cost-effective freeways, short of Rhode Island, Hawaii, and Alaska. Well, that’s if you agree with the study-producing think tank’s philosophy of “Advancing a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of cost-effectiveness. But […]
27
Jun
Jun
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 […]
25
Jun
Jun
Have you seen these signs along Wilshire Blvd? I don’t often drive Wilshire. But when I do, it always seems to be the peak of afternoon rush hour. (Maybe Wilshire always feels crowded?) So as I sit at another red light, I look at these signs and just shake my head in frustration. It turns […]
10
Jun
Jun
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 […]
01
Jun
Jun
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 […]
17
May
May
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 […]
16
May
May
Campus Drive was a ring road that allowed vehicular access to the internal parking lots of Brigham Young University’s campus in Provo: It’s now closed, as you can see from the barrier in the middle of the street: I liked the old way, but to be fair we humans tend to have a status-quo bias. […]
29
Mar
Mar
North of Brigham Young University’s campus boundary sits a house at a T-intersection. Well, I should say “sat” a house. Because a young adult with a medical issue (I suspect suicidal depression, but we’ll never know) plowed an early-90s Suburban into it. And from the looks of it, the Suburban won: The force from the crash was […]
13
Oct
Oct
All the time, we see roads being built. And if a road is being removed, it’s to replace it with a new road. So here’s a rare situation where a road is being removed for the sake of removing it: It’s for good reason. UDOT is building the frontage roads for a new freeway (Mountain […]
09
Feb
Feb
It looks like UTA has broken ground on its future station in Provo. The commuter rail service, called “Frontrunner” already operates between SLC and Ogden. It will soon extend service south to this very site. Location:
21
Jan
Jan
I have no idea what this collision’s back story is. I just happened to be driving by and saw this semi tipped on its side. It almost looks like it’s trailer fell off as it turned east onto 1860 South.
09
Dec
Dec
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, […]
13
Aug
Aug
Props to Salt Lake International Airport for deploying this traffic-saving tool. I drove to pick up a friend whose flight was delayed. Normally, I’d probably just be circling the airport’s ring road waiting for his text telling me to come pick him up curbside. To save on vehicle emissions and reduce traffic and appease customer frustration […]
02
Mar
Mar
I had to get on the phone with UDOT right away when I saw this. Crews added two new “right-turn only” arrows. But why? That sounds really unsafe. The intersection does back up a lot during rush hour, but I think painting a protective “free right” stripe would’ve been a better option. What’s UDOT (or […]
13
Sep
Sep
It only took an extra 5-years to settle all the law suits. But I’m happy to say the new Legacy Parkway (SR-67) is open and I’ve driven it! Here’s a photo dump: