Highways

Fun with Highways: Seattle

After New York and San Francisco, Seattle has recently been among the top cities for this site and our Facebook page. So today we are paying tribute with a visit of some of the city’s highways.

Two of the major highways in the U.S., I-5 and I-90 meet in downtown Seattle at this massive interchange:

I did actually travel to Seattle through this interchange a few years ago, while on tour with the band that would later become Reconnaissance Fly. I-5 may look wide here as it passes under I-90, but further north it felt narrow and windy, more like the highways inside New York City, with buildings on either side of us.  We took the exit for Madison Street and headed up the hill to our gig, not far from some cool-looking transmission towers (Is it weird that I actually remember these particular details?).  It was a bit of a nostalgic trip to go back and read the gig report, and see how far we’ve all come musically since then.

To the west of I-5 is State Highway 99, the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This is a double-decked elevated highway along the industrial waterfront, and actually seems quite interesting, both looking at it from the bay and for the spectacular view of the city and bay that one would see while riding it.

In some ways, it seems like the former Embarcadero Freeway in here San Francisco, including the fact that it is scheduled to also be “former” soon. Plans are to demolish the elevated highway and replace it with a tunnel, and surface boulevard that connects the downtown to the waterfront. The replacement plans seem to be as controversial as the highway itself. Both fall along predictable lines, the typical reaction of many who see a highway like this as an “eyesore”, and those who are worried about the costs of replacing it. The bored tunnel seems quite impressive, and more walkable space seems like a good concept. The replacement of the Embarcadero Freeway here with an open and walkable waterfront space seems quite successful (it was all done before my time), but I still felt a little sad seeing those last vestigial bits of the old infrastructure get demolished last year. I thought they were architecturally interesting (and photogenic). These views (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) show the underside and details of the Alaska Way Viaduct.

Hopefully the project works out well for Seattle. Demolition began earlier this year.

108

Sometimes when things get a bit overwhelming it’s good to turn to numbers and highways. As mentioned in earlier posts, I maintain a rather cursory yoga routine for both health/exercise and grounding. The number 108 comes up fairly often in cycles of repetition and I have been curious about its significance. Long before it was featured on Lost, 108 prominently figured in Hinduism as the number of beads on a mala and in other contexts, and through Hinduism finds its way into Buddhism. 108 has several interesting purely mathematical properties. My favorite is its being the hyperfactorial of 3. The hyperfactorial is the product of consecutive integers, each raised to itself as an exponent:

11 x 22 x 33 = 108

Among the more random properties is being the sum of 9 consecutive integers:

8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 16 = 108

9 is of course a divisor of 108, as in 9 x 12 = 108. And both 9 and 12 appear in the above series.

More significantly, 108 degrees is the angle of a vertex a regular pentagon, and 108 degrees can also be used to derive the golden ratio.

The relationship to the golden ratio would seem to be an interesting one, until one remembers that the representation of angles as degrees is itself arbitrarily based on the number 360. The 3π/5 radian representation is more significant in this regard.

And what about fun with highways numbered 108? Here in California, state highway 108 runs from the Central Valley town of Modesto northward and eastward across the Sierra via the Sonora Pass (north of Yosemite) to meet US 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra.

[Photo by jodastephen on flickr.  (License CC BY-ND 2.0)]

While I have not driven CA 108, I am sure I have crossed its path on CA 120 on the way to Yosemite. From the picture above, it looks like it would be a nice drive, particularly in the summer. The eastern side of the Sierra has that stark, desolate quality, in comparison to the heavily wooded slopes on the western side. They are both quite beautiful, but the eastern side tends to speak to me more.

In New York, Route 108 is a short highway on Long Island. In fact, it is very short, a little under two miles total.  It’s southern terminus is the picture below.

[Photo by dougtone on flickr.  (License CC BY-SA 2.0)]

Route 108 southbound crosses into Nassau County, but soon curves away back into Suffolk. Soon after, the two-lane road continues into Trail View State Park, where the route becomes desolate, passing two local ponds.

It is interesting how the word “desolate” can come up for both highways, with very different connotations.

Fun with Highways: Madison, Wisconsin

Between Facebook stats and popular uprisings, there is a lot of “fun with highways” to be had. And who knew that the next Middle Eastern country to face large-scale protests would be Wisconsin?

We begin in the eastern section of the capital, Madison, where no fewer than three major interstate highways converge, I-90, I-94 and I-39. Appropriately, the interchange is called the “Badger Interchange”. It also includes state highway 30, a short freeway that connects into downtown Madison.

Highway 30 ends at US 151, which traverses the isthmus that holds downtown Madison and separates lakes Mendota and Monona. I don’t know of too many other cities concentrated on an isthmus like that. Certainly, the location between the two lakes makes for interesting views and architectural opportunities. Consider this view from Lake Monona featuring the State Capitol building book-ended symmetrically by large buildings and standing behind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace.

[Photo by Emery on Wikimedia Commons.]

The area is anchored by the State Capitol complex and the University of Wisconsin. The area between the two along State Street seems a bit like familiar streets in Berkeley or sections of northern Oakland – or maybe more like Austin, TX. In addition to numerous restaurants, bars, cafes, galleries and places to hear live music, it too has a reputation as a liberal/progressive center. It also might be a place to play if and when I ever do an upper-midwest tour.

Of course, it is currently also the sight of large-scale protests against the current governor’s plan to strip most collective bargaining rights from state workers. Thousands of protesters have been camping out in the state capitol building and out filling the streets. Here are some images:

[Photos by Lost Albatross (Emily Mills) on flickr.  Shared under Creative Commons license.]

One thing to remember about Wisconsin in February is that it is cold. Even colder than the really irritating freezing cold rain we have been having in San Francisco over the past few days. It makes the protests all the more impressive (and in fairness, the counter-protesters in support of governor also have to brave the cold weather).

Fun with Highways: Piscataway, NJ

Today we visit another of the locales featured on our Facebook Insights, which provides geographical data about where our page receives its “likes”, etc. New York remains our top city, but some interesting other towns made the list as well, including Piscataway, New Jersey.

Piscataway is in Middlesex County in central New Jersey at the southern edge of the New York metropolitan area. The main highway running through the area is I-287, which connects to I-95 and the New Jersey Turnpike to the east, and then travels north and west into northern New Jersey and then back into New York. It is also served by Highway 18, one of the frequent limited-access highways that cover this part of the state.

Unlike Saint Catherines, Ontario, which we profiled a couple of weeks ago, it is possible to draw a specific connection to Piscataway. Just south along Highway 18 is New Brunswick, which is home to the Alfa Art Gallery and the Omega Sound Fix festival from last November. If you have not read the original article from that event, I recommend following this link. The area supports an art and music scene via its proximity to Rutgers University.

Like many towns in this part of the U.S., Piscataway has a long history, dating back to the late 1600s.  It is listed as “one of the first five New Jersey settlements” (I am not sure what the significance of “first five” is).  It has morphed from a more rural community to an established suburb that has been featured in real-estate sections in the New York Times, CNN and elsewhere.

I also have read and personally experienced the area in Middlesex County as one of the highest concentrations of South-Asian Americans (aka “Indian Americans”) in the U.S. I have had relatives in and around the area for years (and I will further embarrassing them at this moment).

Fun with Highways: Cairo Edition

[Click to enlarge.]

“moving traffic and free exit ramps in cairo” on Thursday 10 February, by sierragoddess on flickr. (Creative Commons).  From what I can tell, it looks like this highway is the Ring Road / Mehwar Al Moneeb, south of the area on the map.

“Over the lion of Kasr Al Nil bridge”, by Kodak Afga on flickr (Creative Commons).  She has several other pictures of protests, some with infrastructure and landmarks.  This bridge is on the map and the road it carries feeds into Tahrir Square.

And finally…

Fun with Highways: Saint Catharines

Facebook provides a number of interesting statistics about fans, one of which is the cities (or metropolitan areas) in which they reside. The top cities for CatSynth are not surprising: New York City is #1, with San Francisco and other Bay Area communities high on the list. But one has consistently stuck out among the top cities: Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Today we pay tribute to this rather surprising enclave of CatSynth Facebook fans in our own unique way: a “Fun with Highways” article.

Saint Catharines is located in the Niagara region of Ontario, on the southwest edge of Lake Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls. It’s official nickname is the “Garden City” and is unofficially nicknamed “St Kitts” by people in the area (thanks to regular reader Sue St. Clair for providing this insight).

The city is served by two major highways (known as 400-series highways in Ontario): highway 406 and the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), which connects Buffalo, NY and Niagara Falls to Toronto. The QEW has an interesting history, not only for its name but also its distinction as one of the oldest divided highways in Canada. Below one can see the Garden City Skyway portion of the QEW spanning the city’s other historic transportation feature, the Welland Canal.

[Public domain image via Wikipedia]

One of the first long road trips with my family growing up went through Niagara Falls and Toronto, and I’m sure I passed through Saint Catharines on the QEW with little notice, despite my penchant for staring out the window and observing road signs. One tragic story of the QEW in Saint Catharines involves the death of hockey star Tim Horton in an automobile accident – I mostly know about him not from hockey but as the eponymous late owner of the chain where my friends in Canada go to get their daily coffee.

Interestingly for a highway article, Saint Catharines is also home to the headquarters of the provincial Ministry of Transportation – or rather a headquarters of the Ministry of Transportation, as there seem to be several. Of course, the city is also home to many parks and gardens as the name would imply. One more iconic is Montebello Park.

[Public domain image via Wikipedia.]

The pavilion in the photo above overall has a very classic appearance that one would see in many town parks from this era. But that one structure on the left also evokes a more modernist aesthetic with its unadorned smooth curves. There is something very 1960s about it. Additionally, Montebello Park has a significant connection to Central Park in New York City which I leave as an exercise to the reader.