[SDCBC] A good opinion piece in Voice of San Diego this morning about Per...

[John Eldon]

There are numerous acceptably designed freeway access ramp interchanges out there. Most of the traditional diamond-shaped, signal-controlled ones are not too bad -- I-5 at Birmingham, Santa Fe, Encinitas, Leucadia, and Poinsettia come to mind. The south side of the Palomar Airport Road / I-5 system is OK, but the north side is too much like the north side of Mira Mesa Bl. / I-805 for my tastes. Fortunately, both of those have reasonable workarounds for cyclists. Offramps are a tough situation, because CalTrans understandably wants to dump exiting traffic as quickly as possible, to avoid dangerous freeway backups. On the other hand, most onramps have peak hour metering systems. Why not meter the flow of vehicles into the ramps in the first place, instead of the current hurry-up-and-wait system with the metering signal at the end of what is supposed to be an acceleration lane? Look at the Roselle St. southbound I-5 onramp, whose rectangular mouth design
 creates a highly effective natural flow meter.

One of my favorite solutions, albeit an expensive one, is to interconnect neighborhoods above sunken freeways or beneath elevated ones. When my wife and I walk from Santa Fe Depot to the Old Globe, the museums, or the zoo, we are able to select one of several ramp-free streets to cross over I-5. I would probably choose the same streets when cycling in the northern downtown area. 

--- On Thu, 6/26/08, Robert Leone <rob_leone at earthlink.net> wrote:
Admittedly the 805 interchange is a mess, but then what intercharnge 
isn't? No, that's not a rhetorical question -- are there any examples
of good interchanges out there?
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