unfinished

Fun with Highways: I-380 and I-280

I-380 is a short connector between I-280 and US-101 just north of San Francisco International Airport. The bus ride on I-380 to I-280 and the Daly City BART station was one of my first experiences in California (at that time BART did not yet extend to the airport). In the years since then, I have been through this interchange too many times to count. Here is what it looks like from above:

As one can see, this actually a larger and more complicated interchanged that it should be. I turns out I-380 was going to extend westward over the mountain ridge and to Highway 1 in the town of Pacifica (along the ocean), but this extension was never built, and at this point probably never will be. It would have crossed the San Andreas fault on unstable ground, and the area that would have been the right of way now has several residential developments. But the extra pieces of the interchange remain. The roadway that would have been I-380 continuing underneath is often used by Caltrans to store equipment, while other parts like the unused bridges are pretty much abandoned.

User jasonbentley on flickr has taken a series of photos on unfinished I-380/I-280 interchange.


[Photo by jasonbentley on flickr. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]

The freeway bed comes to a sudden end (all traffic is diverted to the ramps before this point). Beyond here, the right of way is crisscrossed with narrow gravel roadways.


[Photo by jasonbentley on flickr. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]

This unused bridge goes over the connecting ramp from southbound I-280 to eastbound I-380. Most people traveling on the roadway below have no idea this bridge is not in use.


[Photo by jasonbentley on flickr. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]

Do you have examples of unfinished or abandoned highways in your community? If so, please let us know.

CT 11, unfinished projects

Highway 11 in Connecticut is a north-south freeway connecting a major route from Hartford to, well, nowhere. So one moment, you’re happily traveling south on a nice country highway, and then the next moment, you better exit before it turns into a large dirt track and ditch. Or at least that’s the impression I get, having never been there.

It’s quite dramatic, as can be seen in these aerial photos from Greg Amy (we saw a few of his photos before when visiting Yale and New Haven, CT).

It kinda looks like someone just stopped building the highway one day, and forgot to come back and finish. The story, as described on Kurumi’s website and other sources, is that the project simply ran out of funding, and then ran into opposition, though it sounds like plans are now in the works to complete highway 11 to the New London area.

However, the details of CT 11 aren’t really the focus of this article, but rather it serves as a metaphor for the many unfinished projects here at CatSynth. These include:

Finishing my album 2 1/2. There are a few tracks left from this project last Februrary that need to be replaced before releasing the album. I still think I’d doable by late November, but so far I haven’t been able to work much on it during this period of “free time.” Technical problem with my “studio PC laptop” provide at least one excuse.

Although I have been doing work all along on Open Sound World, mostly to support my own music, it’s been quite a while since I have done a full-blown release of the software. It’s hard to feel motivated when most of the feedback reads like this. However, the core software (minus the old user interface) is really solid and musically useful, and I do plan to announce a new direction for the project “real soon.”

I need to do some revisions to my professional/artistic website. At the very least I need to get the performance schedule updated – fortunately, it is already up at MySpace. The goal is to bring it more in harmony with CatSynth and rest of my websites.

I purchased one of the last Kittenettik Fyrall kits from Ciat Lonbarde, but have yet to assemble it. I guess I’ve been waiting to find the right “space”, both literally and figuratively, to do this. If I get on it soon, I might have it done in time for Woodstockhausen.

And of course there are several large articles waiting to be completed and published here at CatSynth, particularly CD reviews, film discussions, and travelogues.

But then again, maybe it’s not so bad that I’m spending time looking for employment.