California is building a $400M shield for Yosemite's most dangerous highway
Caltrans has begun a 675-foot rock shed over Highway 140, the main route into Yosemite, to bypass the Ferguson Slide that buried the road in 2006. The vaulted concrete arch, made of 6,000-ton segments and built to last a century, is meant to reopen the vulnerable stretch within five years. Residents welcome the fix but worry about slides elsewhere on the highway, especially with a strong El Niño expected this winter.
This is California. We're always going to build things where they shouldn't be built. Our whole existence is a wishful dream that the worst won't happen, or that we've engineered our way out of it.
- jandrewrogers
This article is kind of dramatic about describing a normal thing. Alpine highways everywhere in the world have to deal with this. The entire Mountain West is built for this, including some parts of California.
Maybe the Federal government has never bothered to invest in some aspects of road safety in Yosemite. That’s somewhat embarrassing. I’m surprised this is even an issue in Yosemite given how many other places have had this forever. Far more remote and unpopular highways have addressed this problem.
It is difficult to paint this as anything but incompetence.
- janilowski
>“There’s not anything like this in the world,”
Must've never driven through the Alps I guess. There's something like this every couple km
- d5lt5
If the price is somewhere near the price of their upcoming high-speed rail, $400M will buy them less than a mile.
- apexalpha
“There’s not anything like this in the world,” said Corey Casey, Caltrans’ project manager for the shed.
Is there a word for the phenomenon that Americans will just always claim something they do is the worlds best / biggest / most unique until essentially proven otherwise.
How would anyone come to the conclusion that this is a new thing unique to California?
- tz18
>“There’s not anything like this in the world,”