I-80

Fun with highways: Bay Bridge construction

The Bay Bridge has been closed over the Labor Day weekend for a major engineering feat. As part of the replacement of the eastern span, engineers actually cut out a small section near Yerba Buena Island, and actually wheeled in a new section of bridge. This allows the old doomed bridge to be used while the new one is connected up to the island.

Looking towards Oakland from Yerba Buena island, this is what things looked like before the cut- and-replace operation:

You can see a lot more time-lapsed photos and different angles at the official website for the project. They also posted some photos that better illustrate the move itself at Twitter:

New bridge section awaits its moment of glory on Twitpic Bridge move almost complete! on Twitpic 3,600 tons of steel slowly moving into place on Twitpic
[Click on the images above for full-size versions at TwitPic]

Note that this does not really affect the western half of the bridge near on the San Francisco side, which is what we usually show in our Bay Bridge posts and photos at CatSynth. Except of course that it is closed.

And it looks like the closure could be a little bit longer than excepted. There was a serious crack found in one of the metal supports, so now they are working to repair that before opening. It’s just another reminder of why we want to replace the whole eastern span, hopefully before the next big earthquake. Fortunately, the closure doesn’t affect us at CatSynth all that much.

Primary Highways: Indiana

It has been a really busy week at CatSynth, but we're taking some time to continue our “primary highways” series with a visit to the state of Indiana. Appropriately for our series, Indiana is nicknamed the “Crossroads of America.” And that is how many of us know the state, passing from one place to another. It boasts eight major interstate highways: I-69, I-65, I-94, I-70, I-74, I-64, I-80, and I-90. These are indeed crossroads among major U.S. cities, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Boston, Chicago. Detroit, Seattle and are hometown San Francisco.

I have traveled through Indiana en route from New York to San Francisco multiple times on I-80, which is part of the Indiana Toll Road. (Anyone surprised that we are once again traveling along I-80 during this series?)This highway runs along the extreme northern section of the state, passing through farmland, old industrial cities, and the suburbs of Chicago to the west. One can imagine along this landscape the demographic divisions currently being portrayed in the media. One can also observe Indiana's well-known reputation for being flat, particularly in the north. Though in the south, towards Kentucky, the landscape becomes more hilly.

In the northwest, near Chicago, I-80 shares its path with I-94. To the west, I-94 splits off to become the major freeway in downtown Chicago; beyond that it heads towards Milwaukee, then Minneapolis and the northern plains. In Indiana, it hugs the coast of Lake Michigan “before heading east on the long road to Detroit“.

A bit of amusing highway trivia involves I-69, which extends from Indianapolis north to Michigan and eventually the Canadian border. There have been plans for a while to extend I-69 south all the way to Texas and the Mexican border, creating another north-south transcontinental route. Former representative John Hostettler from Indiana was a strong supporter of the extension of I-69, but he also led a campaign to change its designation. Apparently, some “religious conservatives believe 'I-69' sounds too risqu

Primary Highways: Pennsylvania

Well, after several weeks off, we resume our “primary highways” series with a trip to Pennsylvania. And once again, we find ourselves on I-80.

We begin with this interesting photograph from the completion of I-80 at the Milesburg Interchange, from the site pahighways.com. The east and west destinations are reminders why we keep coming back to this particular highway throughout the series.

I-80 traverses a path through the center of the state, though hills and valleys, mostly avoiding larger towns and cities. It is also famously windy and difficult to drive, particularly the eastern half. Indeed it has been cited as one of the “worst roads” multiple times by truck drivers and others. Nonetheless, it is quite scenic, and it does pass by a few notable places. Just south of that cool sign in Milesburg is State College, not surprisingly the home of Penn State University. This school is huge. There is Punxsutawney, the town made famous by the classic film Groundhog Day. Yes, they do have a groundhog there. On the eastern edge of the state, I-80 passes through the mountainous region around the Delaware Water Gap, a frequent “first stop” on trips heading west from New York.

In the northeast, I-80 also passes through the area that includes industrial towns such as Scranton and Allentown, which have been much talked about in the recent campaign. Hillary has some heritage here (and support). It is also where the media is looking for “drama” after Barack Obama's recent comments – I do sympathize with him, but I am holding back from jumping into that milieu. Let's get back to the road…

…much of the action is actually to the south, on Pennsylvania's other major east-west highway: I-76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It connects the major cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the capital, Harrisburg, and New Jersey. I have never been to Harrisburg or Pittsburgh – though I can name all three rivers, which I leave as an exercise to the reader.

According to the site Philadelphia Highways (part of pahighways.com), “Interstate 76 happens to come through the city just a few miles from where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.” Seems like too much of a coincidence, but it is actually the most appropriate number on the interstate grid. And for actual proximity, I-676 and I-95 are even closer to Independence Hall:


[Click to enlarge]

Philadelphia has an interesting dual identity. One is its central role in the history and “mythology” of the United States. (One of the “myths” is that is was the first capital. That was actually New York!) The other is simply being the sixth largest city in the U.S., with life and culture of its own outside the historical sites. It also has a reputation as one of the more dangerous cities. Nonetheless, I have visited several times with no negative experiences. I do feel bad for cities that have a lot to offer, but get tagged with that label. New York certainly went through that as well. We will see how things go for the “City of Brotherly Love” – I would certainly welcome comments from anyone who has lived there…

And we can't close this article without mentioning I-99. I-99 is infamous among some highway enthusiasts for being numbered so inconsistently with the rest of the grid, and for being a construct of pure political vanity. Again, from pahighways.com:

In 1996, Representative Bud Shuster who acquired funds for the upgrading of US 220, had this highway designated an Interstate in Section 322 of the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995…Bud had his highway designated I-99 and had the designation written into law. It was bad enough it runs past his son's car dealership, and violate Interstate highway numbering system too! It should have been numbered I-576, 776, or 976. I like the last…a fitting number for someone that had been under investigation for illegal highway funding acts.

The currently completed section if I-99 takes us back to State College, where we began.

Primary Highways: Wyoming

Even though we're already on to Mississippi today, I did not want to forget the state of Wyoming, which caucused this weekend.

Wyoming is the least populous state in the U.S. The capital and largest city, Cheyenne, is about the same size as my previous hometown, Santa Cruz, CA. The entire state is significantly smaller than my current hometown, San Francisco. But Wyoming is large, and open, something I experienced years ago when driving out from New York to California on I-80. We have gotten to visit a lot of states along I-80 that I remember as part of this series. But coming west, the almost desert-like conditions, wind and brush and emptiness, were a welcome change from largely flat farmland of the previous thousand miles.

We did actually take a detour from I-80 south on US 191 through the Flaming Gorge] area down to Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. The two highways split in a remote area, with mountains and canyons to the south:

One thing I remember quite strikingly was how 191 curled up into the hills heading south from the freeway. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the photographs from the trip available, but this photo from RockyMontainRoads.com illustrates it quite well:

It turns out I had encounted US 191 in Wyoming on a previous trip as well, as it enters Yellostone National Park via the south entrance:

Yellowstone is of course spectacular, and quite a different experience from the starkness of southern Wyoming. It also is the oldest and one of the largest national parks. Although mostly in Wyoming it does extend into Montana and Idaho as well. I leave you with this image from the northern entrance to Yellowstone, in Montana:

The inscription reads “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People,” with the dual purpose of preserving this natural land and making it accessible to “the people.” It seems like a sentiment that is sadly lost in contemporary politics, but that is a topic for another day…

Basilico and Eliasson at SFMOMA

It has been an incredibly warm summer-like weekend here in San Francisco, and I took advantage to explore both my neighborhood and the surrounding areas on foot. Today those wanderings included another visit to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).

The featured photography exhibit of Gabriele Basilico was incredibly in turn with my own recent experience in San Francisco, and my interest in highways and industrial landscapes as expressed here on CatSynth. Indeed, it was the perfect exhibition to complement this weekend – it was been incredibly warm and summer-like, and I have been exploring my neighborhood and the surrounding areas on foot. And the title image of the I-80 and US 101 split, shown to the right, is very similar to a photo from Wikipedia that I cut from my recent Super Tuesday article:

The exhibition includes several other photos of San Francisco highways as well as other familiar images from my SOMA neighborhood, and from the towns in Silicon Valley. From the museum’s statement:

This exhibition presents a series of nearly 50 black-and-white and color photographs taken by Basilico at the invitation of SFMOMA during a monthlong residency in the Bay Area last summer…This exhibition will be the first of an ongoing project focused on Silicon Valley, in which artists will document the area on film. Basilico?s objective style and affinity for observing marginalized urban settings in a classical mode promises a compelling counterpoint to future installments in the project.

This of course inspires me to do more of my own work along these lines. I could probably fill Worldess Wednesday for the rest of the year just with photos of the city.

The next exhibition takes us from the amazingly timely to something “out of time.” Indeed, the title of Olafur Eliasson’s “Take Your Time” exhorts us to suspend our sense of time and enter a world purely of color, light and geometry. The tunnel (on SFMOMA’s fifth-floor catwalk) sets the tone for the exhibit, with color planes, plays on light, and complex but analytical geometric figures.

Challenging the passive nature of traditional art-viewing, he engages the observer as an active participant, using tangible elements such as temperature, moisture, aroma, and light to generate physical sensations.

Eliasson’s pieces also include a room entirely of yellow lamps reminiscent of the sodium street lamps used in places like San Jose, a screen of rippling light that responds to viewers’ movements on the floorboards, and a walk-in geometric figure of mirrors. To really get the most out of these works, one has to “suspend time” and explore them in detail, even though they are devoid of what we usually think of as “detail” (and what I usually try to avoid in art and design). Of course, that can be challenging on a crowded Sunday afternoon. But not impossible, if you take your time.

This article is included in the February 13 Carnival of Cities.