OT: Jeep traffic in Calif

Actually, there's two of them in consideration.

One would go from roughly Glendale to Palmdale, circumventing the "dogleg" of the Northwest on the 5 to Northeast on the 14 route. There's an awful lot of traffic every day that goes an awful lot of extra miles to go around the mountains.

The other is along the route of the Ortega Highway, State Rt. 74 between roughly Lake Elsinore to San Juan Capistrano. I don't know much about this one, but I recall something about them looking at a tunnel. 74 is a narow mountain road with lots of curves and grades.

As for being a fault zone....well that pretty much covers all of California, not to mention coastal Oregon and Washington. I just remember that when the quake hit in the Bay Area, the bridge fell apart, but BART continued to run under the bay!

Another tidbit:

For about 30 years, there has been a fight about completing the last few miles of the North end of the 710 through South Pasadena to connect with the 134/210. NIMBY problems, folks not wanting to divide old neighborhoods, etc. Recently, they figured out that with today's tunneling technology, and the price of the real estate, it would be cheaper to tunnel under the houses than to buy them up!

Best Regards,

DAve

Maybe it's the proposed high speed train under consideration? It will have a tunnel through parts of the mountains north of the Pasadena area.

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I don't know why youa re asking Bill, he doesn't live near it. It's in my backyard, literally.

They want to build a tunnel (I'm in favor of it, by the way) through a moutain that generally connects I-15 to I-5 from a point between Lake Elsinore and Corona to a point in Irvine, or thereabout. (It won't go all of the way to I-5, but if you are not in the region, the detail is not very useful.) Anyway, there is an existing highway - State Highway 91 - that gets something like 250,000 cars per day today, but that number will swell to almost 500,000 in 20 years. There is only 1 east-west route for nearly a half million people to use to get out of the county every morning and back again at night, and this is a two-lane mountain road. If these people don't want to use this route, then they have to go 20+ miles to the south in San Diego County for the next east-west route (also a two-lane road) or go 40 miles to the north to get onto Route 91. The plan is to build another east-west route, but the enviros object to an overland route (widening and improving the existing route, OR building a new route) because there is a National Forest in the way, not to mention a very steep east face on the mountain range.

There is a fault line, the Elsinore Fault, that runs parallel to I-15 along the base of the mountains, and this fault has been inactive for a very long time. As with any fault though, I'm not sure they are ever dead, and when it decides to be active, there could be problems. I live along this fault, within two miles, so I hope it's never active. Technically, the tunnel is not through the fault zone, it is adjacent to the fault zone. None of the tunnel will be on the fault, but one end will be near it.

So, there are a few options being studied now, the two top options seem to be widening the existing route, and building the tunnel. Personally, I think both of these need to be done, but there is a serious problem with money. Either one of them will cost in the neighborhood of 5 Billion dollars.

Technically, that's San Juan Capistrano to Lake Elsinore ...

Hey, I might be out your way in December, well I'll be in your state, not sure if I'll be near you or not. If things work out and I can get the time off I'll be visiting Long Beach.

So if the fault goes big time as ones that don't move often are likely to do, do you end up with beach frontage? ;-)

Mike

I would like it if they took one north-south route, run it non-stop from El Toro to Castaic with an gas stop and ramp at 10, and blocked other all ramps with emergency vehicle gates. Even driving thruough LA at off-hours in the carpool lanes is getting to be insane

Billy Ray proclaimed:

Ayup. The Vegas oddsmakers are already all lined up to take book on how many folks will become instant pizza the next time the San Andreas or similar lets go. Even heard they may have a concession selling Jesus Juice wine just outside.

Did they supply the trailers or were they your responsibility also?

Hey, If they build schools and power stations on fault lines why not an 11 mile tunnel full of Mexican class 8 Macks?

No it doesn't. The road connects San Juan Capistrano to Lake Elsinore. If one wants the shortest route from San Clemente to Temecula, the Ortega Highway is probably not the best choice. I haven't measured it, but my gut instinct is that Hiway 76 through O'side to the I-15 then go north would be shorter than the Ortega, but this is beside the point, Captain.

The Ortega connects San Juan Capistrano to Lake Elsinore. Period.

Yes, I'm up hill -- and inland -- from the fault, and I'll have beach front property if things go reasonably well ...