I-10 closure in California prompts state of emergency | Hacker News Reader

I-10 closure in California prompts state of emergency

sfgate.com

43 pointsakeck54 comments

When the Northridge quake hit in 1994 and took out a section of I-10 (it literally fell and crumbled), they had it rebuilt in 31 days, using the state of emergency bureaucratic "fast pass".

I have a feeling this will be reopened by Thanksgiving.

Another similar repair occurred in 2007 when a truck fire damaged I-880 and I-580 one was repaired in a week and the other 26 days[0].

[0] https://2013.infrastructurereportcard.org/2009/case-study/ma...

Yes! I remember that one too. The contractor had it choreographed down to almost the minute so that prep work for a piece would finish minutes before that piece arrived.

Needless to say, California takes their freeway repair seriously when it is a critical artery through a major metro.

good test to see if system became more corrupt and disfunctional since then.

Story I heard for that job was the city offered a $1M early completion bonus. The contractor that won the bid was confident they would beat the deadline and they underbid everyone by the $1M and got the job.

And, yes, they beat the deadline.

The city coped rather well with that whole situation.

Northridge quake was another testament to all of the work that had been put into earthquake safety and building codes over the years.

You would think that after what happened in Atlanta with 85 a few years ago, which was ironically storage owned by the state where a homeless person set some stuff on fire, they would have known better than to allow any storage under a bridge like this, especially private. Just from a national security standpoint, taking out a few bridges like this could cause havoc.

They did rush the construction to get it back open but it was crazy for a while. Another great reason to support remote work :).

Or public transportation

There’s some large encampments under bart in East Oakland, in addition to other overpasses, underpasses, and other raised concrete infrastructure.

I’m surprised more didn’t happen with the 580 (880?) overpass when there was a big fire near west oakland a few years ago, but they did finally take that as an opportunity to clean some things up. It really is irresponsible to let these things slide

Less fuel to burn I would say. Here there were a LOT of pallets, nice and dry.

Ok - sucks about the closed interstate.

But that robot fire fighter in the lead photo - wow that’s awesome!

Philly replaced a burnt bridge pretty quickly. Not sure how different the sizes are but hoping for a speedy fix.

https://www.businessinsider.com/philadelphia-turns-heads-spe...

Philadelphia was just a single span long, albeit two bridges involved, for N/Sbound. I'm not personally familiar with either location, but between Google Maps and the article, this is looking like a full elevated viaduct, and more than a single deck span. On the face of it, looks like a MUCH more complex problem to replace than Philly's.

When the 35W bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in 2007 it took a year and change to replace it and they paid a premium to make it happen that fast. I don't recall there being any state of emergency declared in the twin cities though.

That was a.more complex river bridge though. And the old design was known to not be useful. Replacing with the same design will be cheaper and faster.

It took 43 days in Atlanta for I-85, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse?...

Also, in Philly, they filled (philled) in the area under the bridge, which may not be possible for I-10 here.

They rebuilt the highway but instead of making it a bridge/overpass, they just filled in underneath the highway (with glass-aggregate filler) for now.

There are longer term plans to turn it back into an overpass.

Native Californian, and Angelino here. It took me a minute to realize all the headlines about I-10 meant THE 10 freeway.

It's a lot catchier to say I-5 or I-95 than it is I-10...

However dropping the classification from a number is equally problematic be it the timezone (E.G. EST / New York) or a freeway.

Absent even any other context, MOST Americans would probably at least consider a highway / freeway / other major vehicle route in their head hearing I-(number).

“The X” in New York would most likely be a train, though no highway numbers in New York go quite as low as the trains.

Also, you can’t authoritatively say “the X” because of the multistate nature of the metropolitan area, where talking about “Route 17” may refer to either NY 17 or NJ 17.

Seemingly, not all Americans (assumption) remember that I-# is shorthand for Interstate (route number) within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" though I can never remember the full title without looking it up either.

This is my favorite Californiaism, especially whenever I drive "the 101".

In Pennsylvania one drives "30" or "22", never with "the" and seldom even prefixing "route" or "US".

Texas just says "35".

I don't think it is unique to CA, I've never heard it any other way in other parts of the southwest.

Makes sense to me, I hear the definite article prefix far more often in SoCal than NorCal/SF Bay.

Back in IL nobody did this, at least not when I lived there over a decade ago.

Illinois is weird in this regard. In Chicago most of the big freeways have names as well as highway numbers that are used with articles in spoken language far more often, even on the TV news. So it’s “The Kennedy, the Ryan, the Edens, the Ike” instead of say “I-94” or “94”.

A notable exception is Lake Shore Drive (US Highway 41) which everyone just calls “Lakeshore” in conversation with no article.

Everyone I talk to calls it LSD.

I’ve lived here nearly 50 years, and even had a Lake Shore Drive address for a few years. LSD isn’t very common at all in my experience. Cabbies in particular all say “Lakeshore” or “Should I take Lakeshore?”. Same with traffic reports on WBBM etc. Everyone who lived in my building said “<numbers> Lakeshore” when asked where they lived.

The economy of two syllables instead of three wins I guess.

That's true about the named highways near Chicago.

I grew up out in the west suburbs, everyone just said "88" "53" "59" "355" "i80" etc.

I've lived here (Chicagoland) since 1965 and most often called LSD as well as "Outer Drive".

And in St. Louis they call I-64 “fardy”.

They call it Highway forty after Us 40, which was its pre interstate name. Personally never heard it called fardy, other than in jest but we do like to have local ways to pronounce things. Exhibit a: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_French

I know it’s after US-40 but I like that it’s a local shibboleth like “Missouree” (St. Louis) vs “Missouruh” (rest of Missouri) and BreadCo vs Panera. We used to say the geographic dividers between those two pairs were identical.

I had one professor who was an unironic “fardy” speaker. I think it’s not common under 50 anymore. But I also haven’t been in town for a long time.

It's interesting that it depends on whether you are in Southern or Northern California[0]. No one says "the 280" or "the 92" or "the 85." But I have heard "the 101" frequently in Norcal.

[0]: https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-5-the-101-the-405...

You hear it in northern cal only from foreigners :-) who have moved here from southern california.

Socal retained the names for freeways much longer than the usage in the north (the bayshore freeway was assigned 101, while, say, 280 or 17 never had names AFAIK). pilingual (does this mean they speak English, Spanish, French, and Southern Californian?) linked to an article that describes this phenomenon in the south.

What’s especially funny is that you adopt the “correct” terminology depending on where the freeway is located. I’m from Northern California and lived in Southern California for a while. When I’d drive to my parents for Christmas, I’d take “the five”. When I’d drive back home after new years, I’d take “highway five”.

A select few roads get the ‘the’ treatment. Apparently this is a historical thing when the freeways were named after their destinations. The Santa Monica freeway etc…

Northern California doesn’t use the “the” for example.

Chicago has named freeways (which they call expressways). The Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan, the Stevenson, several others.

Sacramento has I-80 and business 80. Good luck.

"The Business"...? ;)

It is "The 101" in SoCal - anything else would be odd. Similarly, it is "101" in NorCal - anything else would be odd.

Native Californians code switch based on location.

Some Socal history:

How Los Angeles got in the habit of putting ‘the’ in front of every freeway name

https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/6/16264074/socal-los-angeles-th...

Excellent video on the pain points and tradeoffs related to freeway bridge designs and fire safety.

Practical Engineering: Why fires destroy bridges

Philadelphia I-95 Bridge Collapse Explained

https://youtu.be/iKNw1mnA5M0

How ridiculous that this even happened. It happened in Atlanta 3 years ago. Don’t we learn from huge mistakes like this anymore? The circumstances are exactly the same. Look it up. It’s really stupid that this was allowed to happen again.

> People are advised to take public transit if traveling in and around downtown Los Angeles

I know HN asks that we post thoughtful comments, but the only thing that comes to mind when I read this sentence is "lmfao"

I don't know the context of why that is funny, but I believe having multiple viable modes of transportation is something densely populated areas should always have. Doing everything car-centric is just bad, plain and simple.

If public transit in the mentioned area is badly implemented, then yes, that is funny.

The buses work great. Have you ever taken them?

My neighbor commutes on public transit from south OC to DTLA 5 days a week and has since they moved in back in 2016. He was driving during the pandemic because the roads were empty. I've never heard him complain about it. He leaves around 10am and gets home around 7pm.

Seems like storage of flammable materials under busy freeways is not always a great idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse

I was in Atlanta for a job interview the morning after the collapse.

Boy if you think traffic is bad there normally...

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