Tag: hwy395

There's kind of a puzzling scene along the Carson River. Take a look.

Here's the Carson River, as seen from Cradlebaugh Bridge where it intersects with Hwy 395 in the Carson Valley. This view looks west from the bridge, towards the Carson Range with Genoa Peak in the background. From this angle it looks like a nice, wide, fast-flowing river with plenty of water in it.

This is the view from just a few yards away. This looks to the east from the other side of the bridge, and it brings up an obvious question. Where did all the water go? All that water passing under the bridge from one side emerges as little more than a trickle on the other side, a meandering stream down the middle of a wide, dry, riverbed.

So what's the deal here? Sinkhole? Hidden pipeline to Las vegas? A troll under the bridge drinking all the water? Or maybe there's a small dam under the bridge, and what looks like a flowing river to the west is really a small pond. I don't know, it's just really weird to compare the two sides of the bridge here.

Back in July you may remember that it was announced that Highway 395 through the Carson Valley would be getting a cable barrier installed down the median, to make the roadway safer and protect against crossover accidents on the highway. Well, last month they finally started installing the barrier, starting at the north and heading south. And now large stretches of the barrier are finished near Indian Hills.

My first impression of the barrier is that it's unflinchingly ugly. I guess it's functional, and that's all it needs to be, but it also looks cheap. I surmised over the summer that the only reason they decided on a cable barrier was because of the low cost, and it looks like they settled for the cheapest choice in an already cheap field. The cables look fine, but those posts look like they'd buckle in a stiff Washoe Zephyr, much less in a high-speed collision. The posts are even visibly crooked in many places, like they didn't even take care to stand them fully upright.

I guess it doesn't matter, because in an installation like this it looks like all the strength and stopping power rests in the cables, The posts, then, are there for no reason other than to guide the cables where they need to go. So I have no doubts the barrier will do its job, and if your car crashes into it, you'll stop without ending up in the oncoming lanes. But it looks like sloppy workmanship, and perception is all about the way the thing looks, not the way it functions. Plus, I have to look at this barrier every day, and I was hoping for something a little bit more attractive.

Oh well. The sacrifices we make for safety, I guess.

The good news is that NDOT has a plan in the works to build a six-lane freeway through the Carson Valley, with overpasses, real interchanges, and frontage roads running along either side. The bad news is that it isn't going to be built until the year 2030. So just stick around another 23 years, and all your traffic problems will be over.

Of course the problem with this is that every second that ticks by, the costs of building such a freeway go up. So if you think it would be expensive to build now, just wait 23 years and see what the price tag looks like. So this is probably going to turn into another Carson City freeway fiasco, where it takes 50 years to get built and costs hundreds of times what it would if they had just stopped dithering and built the thing.

But at least we're getting our cable barrier, so that will stopgap everything for the next 23-50 years.

Highway 395 through the Carson Valley is basically a freeway. The fact that the state won't pay the money to build overpasses and make it official doesn't really matter. People use it to commute between Carson City and Minden at high speeds, and there are only a few cross streets that meet up with it. It's a freeway, and people use it like a freeway.

Freeways of course have accidents, because with that many cars traveling at those kinds of speeds it's inevitable that a couple of them are going to smash into each other. And a freeway that's not officially a freeway is going to have even more accidents, just because it doesn't have the built-in safeguards that a real freeway has, like controlled access at the intersections. That's why the stoplight at Stephanie was so important to get built; it's a poor substitute for an overpass at the intersection, but it's better than people darting out into traffic whenever they feel like it.

So collisions at the intersection are one big danger of a highway like 395, but the other big danger has proven to be just as deadly. 395 is a divided highway, but there's nothing stopping cars from crossing the median and ending up facing oncoming traffic. The median is just a big dirt ditch. At the north end of the valley, it's a fairly flat ditch, but the further south you go the more steep the sides get. Almost to the point where, if you hit that ditch down by Muller Lane, it acts as a ramp and launches your car into the air. Then you find yourself dropping onto oncoming traffic from above, instead of just meeting them head-on. Talk about a nasty accident.

Surprisingly, this is one problem that the state has actually decided to tackle. This fall, NDOT will be installing a cable barrier down the middle of the highway, stretching all the way from Muller Lane to Jacks Valley Road. The barrier will catch any cars that do make their way into the median, and stop them from crossing over into the other lanes.

Now, the cable barrier is a controversial choice. It was picked instead of the more conventional concrete Jersey barrier because of the cost, I'm sure. Concrete walls can cost 50% more than a cable barrier, and a wall would also affect the drainage in the ditch, something that was pointed out in the article. But cable barriers have plenty of opponents, mostly motorcycle riders, who contend that this kind of barrier can slice you in half, or even thirds, if you hit it just right. There also seem to be some very vocal lawyers who have a bone to pick against cable barriers, although you always have to question a lawyer's motives. Other studies show that cable barriers are safer, because they have some flexibility to them so it's like your car being caught in a net instead of slamming into a wall.

I guess the real test will be when the barriers actually get installed, and people start running into them. Whatever the result, it's got to be more favorable than having those cars jump into the oncoming lanes, doubling the chances for tragedy.