Tag: hwy395

Barney's Flyfishing Ranch opened along Hwy 395 about three or four years ago, right next to Johnson Lane. A couple of acres of pastureland were bulldozed into a small pond, and stocked with trout. You could then pay to stand on the shore and cast your line into the stocked waters, and you were almost assured of getting a bite. One reviewer said it was "like fly fishing in a miniature golf course".

Barney's didn't last long. There must not have been as much demand as they anticipated, because soon the sign came down, the website shut its doors, and the pond was left to become overgrown with reeds. A For Sale sign went up on the property, and stayed there for over a year.

But now, it looks like there might be life at the old ranch again. The For Sale sign is gone and the Barney's sign is back in its place. Whether that means there are new owners willing to give it a shot, or the old owner figures he might as well do something with the property if it won't sell, I don't know. But it seems like Barney's is back. It's become less of a pond and more of an algae-filled swamp, and it's hard to say if any of the fish have survived, but it's back.

You can still buy Barney's sweatshirts, and I dug up this old commercial for the place.

It seems like they've been working on the roads all over town this summer. They were working on Hwy 50, getting it ready for when the second phase of the freeway opens in the next year or two. Which makes you wonder, why didn't they do all the work they needed to on Hwy 50 all at once, back when they finished the first phase of the freeway? Might have saved a bunch of money overall, and saved us all a lot of headache this year. At least they're almost done, this time for good. So they say.

Also Fairview Drive has been a mess all summer, as they've been widening and repaving it to be able to handle all the new traffic that the freeway will generate. This has involved digging down about three feet below the road grade, and rebuilding it up from scratch. The road has been down to one lane, one way through all of this.

Then there has been the job over the last couple of weeks to resurface Carson Street all the way through town, which seems to have been put on pause for a short while. At least I hope it's only on pause, because it sure doesn't look like they're done with it yet. They're probably waiting until these other two projects are finished.

And now News Carson City reveals the two new projects that are going to be starting this week, making things even worse. The Fairview project is going to be shifting gears, and will soon involve the intersection of Fairview and Carson. This intersection has to be rebuilt from the ground up too, since once the next phase of the freeway is finished all that freeway traffic will be flowing right through here by Office Depot and the Railroad Museum. So the turn lanes are going to be beefed up in just about every direction, and that means a lot of digging up what's already there.

Also, the plan to widen Clearview and rebuild that intersection is also finally going to get underway. This has been in the pipeline for at least three years, when the relatively new A&W restaurant that sat at the corner was demolished back in 2005. Back then the plan was for Clearview to be widened in the spring of 2006. So what's two and a half years anyway? This project will also involve a lot of digging up the intersection, widening lanes, and putting in more efficient turn lanes. All to keep traffic flowing more smoothly.

Update: Photos from before construction starts.

Fairview and Carson

Clearview and Carson

Clearview and Carson

Carson Street is being repaved, apparently all the way from Clear Creek to the freeway. Construction starts about 6pm every day, and continues all night with traffic down to one lane most of the time. If you're passing though town at these times, try to find a nice side street.

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.