The Anchorage, Part 3

[quietrob]

@quietrob: Will you be in a position to go see this in person? BAT-SIGNAL To Be Lit Over Los Angeles In Honor of ADAM WEST

I'll have to see how long it's going to be up. I saw it on our local news. If it lasts over the weekend it may just be worth driving the hour or so (They are doing construction on the freeway) to Los Angeles to see it.

I live in a place called Orange County. Perhaps 10 minutes or so away from Disneyland and when there isn't construction about 40 minutes away from Los Angeles. I always say I live Socal (Southern California) or Los Angeles because it's easier for people to understand.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

But ... there is always construction!

At least, here in Philadelphia! You can't drive anywhere without encountering street construction.

 

[Terre]

I wasn't sure how far south of LA you were. CA is a very long state and "south of LA" is a lot of territory.

 

[Terre]

But ... there is always construction!

At least, here in Philadelphia! You can't drive anywhere without encountering street construction.

Probably can't in LA either.

 

[Miss B]

Here in NY it's not so much street construction as highway construction. I can't recall there ever being a day (or night) when part of a highway wasn't closed because of construction, meaning detours and long delays.

 

[Mythocentric]

Ya know! Sometimes I'm glad that I live in a town which is small enough to walk everywhere! On the other hand the local council are currently modernising the shopping precinct and surrounding streets by their usual process of digging everything up, then stopping for a few months until they decide what to do with it all!

 

[Satira Capriccio]

It certainly is strange the way they do roadwork sometimes.

First ... they dug up about a mile or more along my commute, deep enough that you could barely see the top of the equipment in the trenches. Once they had the trenches all dug. They covered them back in. Of course, one thought they were done.

Nope. They brought in these huge concrete culverts and stashed them along the road, then started digging the trenches again. That all took something like six months.

Then toward the end of that construction, they started in a few blocks from my apartment and tore up the streets for about a mile. That one involved detours and it took them about three months. They'd reopen a street, then close it the next day so you never knew when you were going to need to detour. Of course, you also didn't know you were going to need to detour until you got to the closed street, then either had to detour onto City Ave or turn around. Since City Ave is a street of last resort, I turned around. Only to discover yet more haphazard street closures.

In the meantime, on the other end of my commute, they have been replacing the Vine Street Expressway bridges. The Vine Street Expressway goes under the Ben Franklin Parkway, which is a major commuting street. So ... three lanes of traffic was often down to one lane. Construction and Parkway closures started March 2015 with construction halted for the Pope's visit. Not that that made my commute any easier, since they closed the Parkway and all possible side streets for the Pope's visit. Construction is expected to be complete November 2018.

Mind you ... before they started the bridge replacement, they tore up the Parkway to repave and put in new curbing, sidewalks, blah, blah, blah.

So for three years or more, there have been major delays as I try to get to work and back home.

 

[Terre]

Ugh. At this rate I doubt they'll be done on time. My sympathies on the mess.

 

[Mythocentric]

This is one of my favourite examples of civic silliness. I mentioned a while back that the council had sealed off about a mile of the promenade centred on the end of our road to undertake 'improvements'! Introducing the Hump, or in council PR speak, a wave reflection feature which blocked off our nearest entrance to the prom in the interests of preventing flooding (which has never happened since the little fishing village of Poulton existed long before Morecambe was ever thought of). Building it (along with repainting the walls either side) went nine months overdue. Pity no one thought about the residents of the three old folks homes in the vicinity who used to make use of the benches (which have also disappeared) on the prom to take in the sea air, many of whom who now need assistance to make their way up the ramps and down the other side and back again. Just for fun we've been informed that they intend to build two more 'wave reflection features' at the two other entrances nearby, at the Yacht Club and the Broadway Hotel, at a total cost of ten million UK pounds! This from a council who are already slashing funding to schools, libraries, kiddies nurseries (many of which have had to close!), and policing! The mind boggles!

 

[Terre]

That looks kind of low for a seawall if they're thinking of storm surges like the ones that have hit the news the last couple of years.

 

[quietrob]

With the revolution of the Left taking over California, one of the few things we do well is Freeway construction. We give a bonus for finishing ON TIME and a severe penalty for going OVER time. We also have a deal where we announce that we are closing a huge stretch, say 20 miles of Freeway at one time, for one day and night. The crews work day and night and finishes up and we have something we call CARmageddon. You know when you close an entire freeway that all detours and other freeways are going to be packed to the breaking point.

However, that never happens. Because no one wants to be caught in CARmageddon, suddenly all of our Mass transportations and carpool lanes fill up. Congestion is eased and we're flying through our six lane freeways the way we were meant to be. That lasts for about two or three days and then it's back to Traffic as usual.

I will date myself and say I remember the 1984 Olympic Games. For two weeks Los Angeles and the surrounding areas put on our best face to the world. We, as a people, didn't want any atheletes being late to a venue because of our crummy traffic. We carpooled, took mass transit and the freeway flowed like a river. That time lasted for about two weeks before we went back to our usual ways and gummed up the freeways once more.

That looks kind of low for a seawall if they're thinking of storm surges like the ones that have hit the news the last couple of years.

We have a city called New Orleans that hadn't had a flood for decades. They ignored the seawall and upgrading their levies.

The result wasn't what they hoped for.

Best upgrade before things happen. Upgrading afterward could be rather unpleasant. However, slashing funds from libraries, Kiddie nurseries and the police is not the best idea I've ever heard.

 

[Mythocentric]

That looks kind of low for a seawall if they're thinking of storm surges like the ones that have hit the news the last couple of years.

That's the interesting part Terre. This is the view of the beach directly in from of the Hump. The sea wall is about eight feet high from beach to promenade with a secondary wall (just visible to the left and the Hump) on top of that. The biggest surge in the last ten years was the remnant of a hurricane moving across the Atlantic from the US and even that didn't reach the seawall. The average water depth along this stretch of the coast is around 36 inches at high springs. I suspect the recent construction work is more to do with the silly burghers trying to justify themselves whilst detracting from the millions they've wiped from local budgets in the past few years! As an angler and frequent sailor I keep a close eye on tidal conditions and there is certainly no trend towards higher tidal ranges. In fact the opposite is true with silting all along this coastline the water is getting shallower and the high tide mark moving further offshore! Go figure!

 

[Miss B]

I had a feeling the sea wall was deeper than it appeared in the first photo. The angle of that view could be deceiving.

 

[Terre]

I had a feeling the sea wall was deeper than it appeared in the first photo. The angle of that view could be deceiving.

A bit deceiving, yes.
I took a closer look at maps and it seems to me that the areas that have been hit by the truly bad storm surges the last couple of years are quite a ways south of Lancashire. I hope that upgrade isn't a total waste of money but do have to admit that the places I was thinking of didn't have Ireland rather close to the west. They had open ocean.

 

[Terre]

@quietrob : More places need to handle things the way you guys are when it comes to freeways and such.
In Albuquerque (at least up until the mid '80s when I left there) street repairs often took 2 to 3 times as long as they were projected to but much of it wasn't the contractor's fault. It was the d@mn city drivers running orange barrel slaloms which the workers would then have to repair the next day. Back when my husband was just a friend he was staying in a place that was just a few dozen yards from a major intersection. (Central and Louisiana if I remember right.) They had dug a long, deep trench to put in a pressure plate stoplight system with the pit correctly marked with barrels. All nite he heard SCREECH-THUMP over and over until the pit was full enough that drivers could see the rear end of the last wreck and thus stopped dashing between the barrels.

ETA: I didn't make up that "orange barrel slalom" bit. That behavior actually is called that by the locals. Also the most hazardous city job was being the sign holder for road work. Seriously.

 

[Miss B]

Also the most hazardous city job was being the sign holder for road work. Seriously.

Oh, I can definitely believe that.

 

[quietrob]

@Terre

My bad for thinking you might not know our major cities. With the international flavor of the forums, from Brazil to the UK to New Zealand, I actually forget that it's also filled with Yankees like me! Every American knows (or should know) about what happened in New Orleans, including our friends who can see Russia from their house.

@Mythocentric For our friends from the UK, we here in the colonies, get up to date news regarding your recent disasters and attacks. Stay Strong you Abbey Road walking, Big Ben watching, biscuit eating Brits!

 

[Terre]

@quietrob : LOL No problem. With our mix of nationalities here you have an excuse.
Many other Americans slept through geography class though...... One of Our 50 Is Missing
I had my own run in with that in the early '80s. My dad was in Louisville Kentucky and wanted to send me a package in Albuquerque. It took him 15 minutes to get the postal clerk to understand that he wasn't trying to send an international package!

 

[Satira Capriccio]

So ... um ... are there no ramps for those in wheelchairs?

But yeah. I constantly wonder where all this money comes from. Schools, libraries, emergency services, and social services funding is increasingly slashed, while billions of dollars is spent on street/road construction.

This is one of my favourite examples of civic silliness. I mentioned a while back that the council had sealed off about a mile of the promenade centred on the end of our road to undertake 'improvements'! Introducing the Hump, or in council PR speak, a wave reflection feature which blocked off our nearest entrance to the prom in the interests of preventing flooding (which has never happened since the little fishing village of Poulton existed long before Morecambe was ever thought of). Building it (along with repainting the walls either side) went nine months overdue. Pity no one thought about the residents of the three old folks homes in the vicinity who used to make use of the benches (which have also disappeared) on the prom to take in the sea air, many of whom who now need assistance to make their way up the ramps and down the other side and back again. Just for fun we've been informed that they intend to build two more 'wave reflection features' at the two other entrances nearby, at the Yacht Club and the Broadway Hotel, at a total cost of ten million UK pounds! This from a council who are already slashing funding to schools, libraries, kiddies nurseries (many of which have had to close!), and policing! The mind boggles!

View attachment 26951

 

[StudioMartillo]

There's only one highway anywhere near my home, and in the 5 years I've been here, haven't seen any road construction at all.
However, as one might expect, the roads are a bit rough.
My home street, where waits my trusty steed...

Up at the main intersection...

And down the main road...

Nobody seems to care about the roads though. We don't want those county crews around making a big racket. Nothing you could call traffic around here anyway.