California Highways: Planning for Progress (1970s)

[Music] for 19 million people live in California that's 1/10th the population of the 50 states but only for this month next month there will be 10,000 more next year 13 million more will live in California than last year enough to populate a good siiz City we are addicted to the automobile there are 11 million registered cars trucks and buses traveling the highways of California but by 1980 there will be 20 million vehicles in California alone not all the population increase in California is due to the birth rate migration is a large Factor the rate of migration into this state is almost 400 people per day many families come to visit and stay to orient their lives by the automobile new people people mean new housing developments utilities social services and Automobiles streets highways and freeways it all began with a gold rush in 1849 since then transportation in California has leapfrogged a thousand years of technology in a century from Frontier paths to Urban freeways this development is not a luxury but a necessity Theon economy and the standard of living depend on the rapid growth of Transportation facilities California is made up of cities able to grow swiftly because the accelerated development of freeways has given them new Hearts new circulation systems the necessities of living include Recreation and most Californians get to their fund by way of the highways in California there are miles of ocean leagues of sandy beaches and mountains 3 mil High natural Wilderness remains and it is accessible to more and more people because of the automobile and highways Californians will travel a 100 miles for a day's outing or to go to the ballet some evening or to the high hills to show their California children what snow is like for whatever reason pleasure trips are daily commuting they move on highways highways along the ocean freeways into the center of a city for a day shop [Music] in across abundant valleys and through lonely deserts at high speeds they travel 96 billion vehicle miles per year that's the equivalent of 500 round trips to the Moon every day this astronomical amount of travel requires an equally fantastic growth in a well-designed highway system the California division of Highways one of the largest and most advanced Highway organizations anywhere maintains a technological lead by fostering radical Innovations developed by Private Industry Paving a highway used to be a laborious job for Pick and shovel men now California builds instant freeways the forlane slip form pav lays down an unbroken 48 ft wide strip of concrete Highway in in one pass this quarter of a million doll machine supported by a continuous batch mixing plant produces 550 cubic yards of concrete Paving an hour about twice the amount of pavement produced per day in 1928 the p is controlled by an electronic panel guided and turn by a sensing device which follows a taught carefully surveyed wire this wire is the only guide no rigid forms of any kind are used the result a highway surface of exceptional smoothness four times as smooth as required in the past and this is something the driving public appreciates with the speed of today's traffic the pipe float is a separate self-propelled unit and follows the pav the pipe Smooths the surface and a burlap drag gives an nonskid texture to the wet pavement several passes are made with the pipe Flo all is not lost if edges are missed the first time the functioning of the p is largely automatic within given bounds everything is run by $40,000 worth of electronic circuitry an experienced operator checks for malfunctions and stands ready with manual controls if need be behind the success of this operation is a story familiar to Engineers Logistics a steady supply of concrete is precisely dumped into spreaders station just ahead of the constantly moving p as one truck pulls out another moves in with more material at the batch plant an electronically controlled loader keeps two mixers running constantly ready to reload the dump trucks with fresh concrete constant motion carefully planned feeds the 48t slip form pap [Music] e these terrible scenes were a scientific test of radio controlled automobiles deliberately crashed by the California division of Highway ways as part of a 10-year program of research the design of effective median barriers has been one of the principal goals of this program various combinations of vehicles barriers and driving speeds were made in simulated crashes to obtain data on proper median barrier design two types of median barriers have been adopted to prevent high speed traffic accidentally crossing the dividing strip and causing head-on collisions on freeways this beam barrier design evolved from the test and is used on narrow median strips the chain link barrier the more effective of the two requires a wider median the unraveling chain link fence dissipates the forward energy of the vehicle and helps to entrap it to prevent the car bouncing into the traffic stream with the use of median barriers we are trading property damage for lives in many instances the barrier is the only factor that prevents a head-on crash another kind of barrier is this motor operated Lane control fence at the cicott tunnel a main traffic artery between San Francisco and East Bay Cities the direction of traffic through the central bars revers twice daily the problem of switching traffic direction has been solved by an automatic Lane control system of changeable signs markers and barriers that can pop up and down out of the pavement at the touch of a button further checks and AIDS are furnished by closed circuit television a motorist approaching the tunnel encounters three different kinds of things that warn or guide him first changeable signs then a series of flexible barriers or popups finally a positive barrier to make sure that he does not cross over into opposing traffic there are four signs at each end of the tunnel remotely controlled to change message lines once these messages change Columns of flexible plastic tubing pop up pneumatically controlled by the same circuitry as the signs these columns gradually angle across the lane guiding traffic into the right hand Lanes closing the [Music] left a final barrier of steel posts and cable prevents vehicles from crossing over into opposing traffic this system although seemingly elaborate saved the larger expense of building an additional tunnel through the mountain for peak hour oneway traffic perhaps the best ever evidence of the complexity of the California highway system its sophistication and its functionalism is given by a look at some major freeway interchanges in the Los Angeles metropolitan [Music] area [Music] [Music] Los Angeles has the greatest freeway system in the world several interchanges each move about 200,000 vehicles per day why do drivers crowd the freeway the freeways are Swift traffic moves at 65 mph and freeways are safe 2 and a half times as safe as ordinary city streets freeways are the preferred routes of travel while less than 10% of all paved roads in California are freeways they accommodate almost 60% of all traffic in the state or will in the next 15 years building and maintaining highways in California is truly a big business the expenditure of nearly a billion dollars per year is required to do the job to keep Californians moving to their jobs and their Recreation to take their products to Market and to bring in needed services and supplies to ensure a continuous state of progress in America's most aggressive state [Music] [Music]