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Site Change Log
2009 Changes


December 2009:

Well, another year of road updates has come to an end. It's been a busy year, what with the CISSP exam early in the year, and the broken link check at the end of year. It's a year that saw California see major budget problems, which only exacerbated the maintenance decline of our once great highway system. It saw the starting of our Facebook group, which sees regular postings of links to articles related to the California highway system (if you are on Facebook, do a search on "California Highways" and friend us). It saw even further declines in the old stalwart, misc.transport.road, as well as decline in the number of emailed updates. It saw the death of Geocities, which removed a large number of unmaintained road information pages from the net, including the other two long-presence general California highway pages, those of David Stanek and Neuman Parada. In fact, the turning of the year is the end of a decade (2000-2009) that has seen significant changes in this site, this state, our country and the world. I wish for all my California Highway friends that the upcoming year and decade will be significantly better and prosperous in both health, happiness, and welfare than the last. And with that, let's turn to the updates...

The following are any updates from backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers (which are usually posted to the Facebook group), the AAroads forum, as well as updates from misc.transport.road (which has become useless). This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Ralph Herman(2), Dominic Ielati(3), Chris Thomas(4)]:Route 30(2), Route 66(1), Route 99(3), Route 110(1), Route 118(1), Route 180(4), Route 241(1), US 50(1), US 101(1), I-210(1,2)

Updated the links page to reflect the merging of RockyMountainRoads.com back into AAroads.com. Eventually, WestCoastRoads will also merge in... I'm not looking forward to that one. Added a link to the Mile-By-Mile route guide for California.

Reviewed the Pending Legislation page. As is expected in the November/December time frame, there is little legislative action: no new bills, no new resolutions, nothing being signed.

I checked the CTC Liaision page,, for the results of the December meeting. The following items were of interest:

It is interesting to note the large number of local, non-state-highway system projects that the California Transportation Commission is funding (which generally don't show in these summaries).

November 2009:

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm taking advantage of the day after Thanksgiving to do an update. The following are any updates from backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers (which are usually posted to the Facebook group), as well as updates from misc.transport.road (which has become useless). This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Alan Mintz(2)]:Route 47(1), Route 72(2), Route 91(1), Route 118(1), US 101(1), I-80(1), I-710(1), I-405(1). Additionally, Mike Locke provided an update on the steepness of Route 4.

Noted that past issues of California Highways and Public Works appear to be available online. One source is the Internet Archive; Nathan Edgars has also made them available via Wikipedia. I should note that the California Highways Wikipedia project is independent from this site: I do not work on the Wikiproject, although they may obtain information from my site. The editor of the Wikiproject, Nathan, has occasionally provided me with updates for my pages.

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. There were no updates, except for a special session called to deal with water policy.

Did something I've been meaning to do for over two years: a broken link check. A large number of links were deleted. This wasn't a small task, taking over 10 hours to check over 2,200 links, with over 500 of them being bad, and then identify where they were in the pages and remove them. Notable removables were Jeff Stapler's pages with Western Exits (the site has just disappeared), Joel Windmiller's highway pages that weren't preserved elsewhere (his original PacBell site is, surprisingly, still up, but his highwayman-routes is long gone, and he's never fleshed out Goldenstatehighways as promised), and all the Geocities pages (including Neuman Parada's third.cahighways.org and the original California Highways pages by David Stanek). I guess I'm the sole survivor in terms of route listings, no pictures. Caltrans has also moved a bunch of sites around, and newspapers, as they tend to do, have pulled source articles offline. I should also note that I discovered an error in Caltrans' Calnexus pages: they indicate that Route 75's page is 75.pdf, but that gives a 404. However, the older version of the exit list is still there at seventyfivenorth.pdf and seventyfivesouth.pdf.

I checked the CTC Liaision page,, but there was not a November meeting of the CTC. The next meeting is the week of December 9, 2010.

September/October 2009:

Although this site is now updated bimonthly, that doesn't mean road news isn't happening. I do post articles of interest on the California Highways group on Facebook -- I encourage you to follow that.

Processed backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers, as well as updates from misc.transport.road (which has become useless) and Facebook. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Michael Ballard(2), Eric Armourer(3), and Dominic Ielati(4)]:Route 70(4), Route 74(1), Route 76(3), Route 91(1), Route 154(1), I-80(1), I-215(1), I-680(1), I-710(1), I-805(1), I-880(1), San Diego County Sign Route S21(2).

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. Noted the passage of the following:

Reviewed the September and October CTC Summary and Web Books. I noted the following items for inclusion:

July/August 2009:

Maybe I should just break down and admit that these are now being done every two months. Other projects, vacations... what can I say? But here goes...

We start out with a bunch of link corrections, courtesy of Alex and the folks at AARoads, who are consolidating some of their websites and simplifying from the days where multiple websites were needed for the storage. As part of this, I put a warning sign on all the identified Geocities sites. There were also some link updates provided by Pete Jenior.

Processed backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers, as well as updates from misc.transport.road (although there were precious few of the latter -- discussion there seems to have degenerated). This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Larry Scholnick(2), Chris Thomas(3), and Carl Rogers(4)]:Route 2(1), Route 4(3), Route 23(1), Route 110(2), Route 200(3), US 101(1,3), and I-680(4).

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. Noted the passage of the following:

Reviewed the July and August CTC Summary and Web Books. I noted the following items for inclusion:

May/June 2009:

Yet another long period between updates. No real excuse other than real life keeping me busy on the weekends. So let's dive in...

Added a link to the Facebook Fan Page to the front page of California Highways. I'm using this fan page to post news articles related to highway routing, construction, and history, so it is worth fanning if you are at all interested. If you find an article of interest, please post it or mail it to me.

Made a few link corrections. Note that most of mail regarding the Geocities pages disappeared into the ether, so come October 26, those pages will as well. I did receive two responses. James Schul indicated he hasn't updated Ohio's Version of Route 66 in 10 years and it will disappear with Geocities (no action on my part, yet). Marcel Monterie indicated that his Geocities page (Description of the world's road numbering systems) will be moving, and can be safely referenced with http://www.monterie.com . This should also affect his page on numbering in Brazil. I have updated my link pages appropriately.

Processed backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers, as well as updates from misc.transport.road. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Argatlam_roads(2), Michael Ballard(3), Dominic Ielati(4), Cameron Kaiser(5), Michael Patrick(6), Steve Ruge(7), Chris Thomas(8)]:Route 1(1), Route 2(3), Route 18(5), Route 22(1), Route 23(1), Route 24(2), Route 30(5), Route 99(4), Route 152(6), Route 156(6), Route 160(8), Route 241(1), US 101(1), US 395(5), I-5(2), I-80(1,2), I-205(1), San Diego County Sign Route 680(7).

Noted publication of a master list of ARRA projects (Stimulus projects). Most of these projects look to be SHOPP projects (maintenance) -- roadway rehabilitation, new roadbeds, minor safety improvements, drainage. Four of the projects were ones that also showed up in the CTC level list: (1) Route 24 Caldecott Tunnel project (PPNO 0057A): Construct 4th Bore to Caldecott Tunnel; (2) Route 215 High Occupancy Vehicle Lane project Segments 1 and 2 (PPNO 0247P): Add Mix-flow, HOV, and Aux Lanes; (3) Route 405 in Los Angeles County project (PPNO 0851G): Northbound HOV Lane; and (4) Route 905 in San Diego County project (PPNO 0703): Construct 6 Lane Freeway Phase 1B. The CTC is also using ARRA funds for the Doyle Drive reconstruction on Route 101.

Noted what appears to be the earliest findable California Highways post: December 31, 1992. I've been doing this for over 16 years. Wow!

Updated the list of Highest Summits/Passes/Routes, thanks to corrections from Ron Hall. Added a link to Mark Roberts 1936 State Highway Map.

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. Noted the passage of the following:

Checked the Calnexus page to see if there had been any updates. There weren't any.

Reviewed the May and June CTC Summary and Web Books. I noted the following items for inclusion:

May 2009:

Yup, it's been a few months. I've been preoccupied working on my CISSP certification from (ISC)2, which involved a lot of study and review. I'm pleased to say that I took the exam on April 18, 2009, and received word that I passed on April 24, 2009. The next step is endorsement from another CISSP, and that certification has already been faxed into (ISC)2 headquarters. Of course, this means that I can start working on updates and backed up submitted items again. So here goes...

Created a Facebook Page for fans of "California Highways". Yup, I'm on Facebook as well as Livejournal. I'm going to use the California Highways Facebook Page to provide more timely highway related news--in particular, I'll be using it to post articles I find during the day related to California highways. In the past, I've just forwarded these articles to myself for inclusion in the pages, but the Facebook page gives me a way to easily share the full article with interested parties.

Processed backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers, as well as updates from misc.transport.road. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Michael Ballard(2), Eve Diamond(3), Timothy Edwards(4), Dominic Ielati(5), Kenneth Kao(6), Cameron Kaiser(7), Scott M. Kozel(8), Carl Rogers(9), Larry Scholnick(10), Daniel Stock(11), Oscar Voss(12), and Joel Windmiller(13)]:Route 2(1), Pre-1934 Route 26(1), Route 39(4), Route 71(4), Route 75(7), Route 84(1,9,13), Route 91(1), Route 92(1), Route 110(1), Route 160(1), Route 203(11), US 50(5), US 99(2), US 101(1,12), US 395(7), I-5(1,2), I-10(1), I-15(10), I-80(1,5,6,8), I-215(1), I-280(1), I-405(1), I-880(1), corrections to the chronology(3), corrections to the discussion on highest summits(11).

I also added historical information on I-10, Route 110, Pre-1934 Route 26, and US 101 derived from http://ladot.lacity.org/pdf/PDF100.pdf.

Prepared for the upcoming closure of Geocities. I sent mail to the owners of the following pages asking for their new URLs: Texas Highway Routes (David Stanek*), Texas Interstates (Marty Blaise), Potomac Valley Exit Guides (Allen Seth Dunn*), Henry Watson's Online Freeway (Henry Watson), Louisiana Interstates (Marty Blaise), David's Michigan Interstates (R. David Carey), Michigan Highways (Clayton Bigsby), Roads in NJ (Chris Wilson**), Ohio's Version of Route 66 (James Schul***), Road Numbering Systems: Brazil (Marcel Monterie), Australian Highways Page (Bradley S. Torr), Georgia Route Log (J.T. Legg), Interstate 685: Atlanta's Superbelt (Tony Graham), California State Highways Web Page (David Stanek*), On The Road Again (Louisa Moore), Streetlight Heaven (Mike), Michelle Skinner's Interstate Page (Michelle Skinner*), The Ultimate Interstate System (Jeff Watson and Henry Watson*), Kim Russell's U.S. Highways Page (Kim Russell), David's Highway Links (R. David Carey), Description of the world's road numbering systems (Marcel Monterie), Mr. Wheels (Mr. Wheels), Doug Parker's Road Dogs (Doug Parker), Spaghetti Junction (Michael King). Note: * indicates the email was returned due to an invalid address; ** indicates there was no address in the pages; and *** indicates the author responded that the page will die with Geocities.

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. As usual, no bills were passed, although the legislature was earning its paymaking itself look busy by submitting loads and loads of bills, many of which didn't do anything substantive. I submit that one reason for the budget crisis is that the legislature has too much time on its hands, and keeps passing bills that cost the state money. Perhaps we could balance the budget by making the legislature (and its corresponding staff) much more part time.

Checked the Calnexus page to see if there had been any updates. Last I heard (in September), updates had been on hiatus due to the State of California budget situation. They had hoped to resume updates with the signed budget, and nothing had happened as of January. Well, it finally looks like a few were updated: Route 87, Route 90, Route 92, Route 135, Route 204, Route 244, Route 259, I-380, I-905, and I-980 seem to have the new PDF style pages now.

Reviewed the February, March and the two April CTC Summary and Web Books. I noted the following items for inclusion:

I also noted, from the April meeting, the folloiwng items funded as loans against future bond funding thanks to the Stimulus funding:

January 2009:

The first update cycle started by processing backed up email changes, notes from my reading of the papers, as well as updates from misc.transport.road. This resulted in changes on the following routes, with credit as indicated [my research(1), contributions of information or leads (via direct mail or Usenet) from Michael Ballard(2), Patrick Carroll(3), Desert Neighbors(4), Dennis Holland(5), Eric McGill(6), Michael Patrick(7), and Chris Sampang(8)]:Route 1(1), Route 24(1), Route 77(3), Route 84(7), Route 125(2), Route 156(5), Route 185(3), Route 220(7), Route 229(8), Former US 66(4), US 101(1), I-580(1), I-710(1), and San Diego County Sign Route S12(6).

Looked for updates for the legislative information page. Some new bills were added, but as this is early in the session, nothing was passed.

Reviewed the January CTC Summary and Web Books. I noted the following items for inclusion:


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