Refraction of Sunlight on a Kiewit Crane Creates Potential Air Disaster in LA's Sepulveda Pass - 2012

 

Refraction of Sunlight on a Kiewit Crane Creates Potential Air Disaster in LA's Sepulveda Pass

On January 29, 2012, I visited the Mulholland Drive Bridge replacement project and got a close-up look at progress there. Starting in Hollywood on a clear afternoon, I drove Mulholland Drive until its intersection with Interstate I-405. There I traveled west across the remaining north side of the Mulholland Drive Bridge. After parking my car and surveying the scene, I soon found a perch that overlooked the freeway and construction project.

With the natural light on my back, the late afternoon sunshine provided good visual contrast at the ongoing project. Along with the remaining half-bridge, new support structures and construction cranes fought for dominance of the scene. The Kiewit cranes had the upper hand, with their great, latticed booms dominating the vertical scene. Less than half as tall as were the twin derricks, massive new freestanding bridge-supports imparted strength and security to the scene.

Each of the massive crawler cranes had a cab painted in the signature gold color of Liebherr Cranes, a German manufacturer. That company, through its U.S. affiliate offers a wide range of mobile and fixed construction cranes. Each of the Sepulveda Pass cranes crane had a single latticed boom, which could be up to 89-meters (226 ft.) in length. With its boom painted black and sporting a white tip, the west-side crane created a high visual contrast against a clear Los Angeles sky. At that time, the east-side crane stood in full sun. After lifting a load with the crane, an operator came out of the golden cab and stood upon the huge crawler treads.

On the east-side crane, I could see the bridge contractor’s logo, with the name Kiewit painted boldly on the side of the long cab. Since the Mulholland Drive Bridge project required demolishing and rebuilding the bridge one-half at a time, these cranes shall see service at this site for years to come. Rather than simply leasing them for this job, it appeared that the contractor had purchased both of these cranes.

For some reason, I kept looking back to the golden crane on the east side of the freeway. Since so much of sunlight falls into the yellow and gold portions of the visual spectrum, the entire crane appeared to glow in the lengthening light. To me, the huge crawler crane appeared as a beautiful piece of kinetic sculpture. If I starred at it long enough, the golden crane virtually disappear into the scattered light of the sky. A shake of my head brought the skyward-reaching boom back into focus.

Before I departed the west side of the bridge, I stopped to take a picture of the lane closure created by the partial demolition of the bridge. When I turned the camera from horizontal to vertical, I realized that an old friend was standing guard there both day and night. It was Coney the Traffic Cone, of course. Too shy to speak, Coney had stood there for months hoping that someone would notice him as he warned motorists that half the bridge was missing.

When it was time to leave, I drove east across the bridge and then headed for the northbound on-ramp of the I-405. That ramp has a straight downhill run and enters the freeway just south of the summit and the bridge replacement project. As I descended the ramp and then drove under the bridge, I fired my camera shutter repeatedly. After entering the freeway, I stopped shooting as I passed close to the east-side golden crane.

Later, I uploaded my photos and began writing this article. As usual, I selected the pictures first and then wrote the text to match. It was then that I discovered the incredible disappearing crane. As you view the accompanying animated GIF image, you will see four frames in which the golden crane fades into the northern sky. Whether the golden crane poked through the veil and into another dimension, I cannot say. Perhaps it was simple refraction and diffusion of sunlight through the golden lattice boom of the crane.

Once I got over the metaphysical possibilities inherent in the scene, I realized that no matter the cause, the beautiful golden crane was a hazard to aircraft flying near the Sepulveda Pass. Although there are minimum elevation restrictions for commercial and private aircraft in Sepulveda pass, Kiewit’s Golden Crane still represents a danger to public safety.

Police chases on the freeways of Los Angeles are a regular occurrence. The first line of defense is the police cruiser or perhaps a CHP cruiser. Following in the air, is usually an LAPD helicopter. Above that, typically there are several TV news helicopters. With the golden crane disappearing into the haze of the northern sky, a Sepulveda Pass police chase could easily become an air disaster. If the angle of the sun is right, the pilot of a fast moving helicopter might not see the crane until it is too late.

As beautiful as the golden crane may be, it should be lowered and its boom repainted in high contrast black, with a white tip, just like the crane on the west side. Until then I will not sleep easily knowing that there is a huge Kiewit crane materializing and then dematerializing next to the busiest freeway in Los Angles.

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By James McGillis at 05:35 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link

In LA Traffic, Design Purity Outmaneuvers Common Sense - 2011

 

In LA Traffic, Design Purity Outmaneuvers Common Sense

In July 2011, Caltrans contractors demolished the southern half of the Mulholland Highway Bridge, which spans the busy Interstate I-405 Freeway at Sepulveda Pass in Los Angeles, California. The reasons for replacing only one-half of the stately structure at a time are obscure. Suffice to say that local homeowner groups held out for purity of design. Rather than allowing the road to jog at either end of the bridge, those groups forced Caltrans to build the same bridge twice, one-half each time. As they say, “Only in Los Angeles…”

People who drive in Los Angeles know that “The 405” is the only freeway route through the Santa Monica Mountains within twelve miles. Connecting the San Fernando Valley with West Los Angeles, the I-405 is an ever-widening ribbon of concrete, and one of the busiest highways in the world. In January 2012, I drove southbound past the construction site to Marina del Rey. My return trip that afternoon took me northbound over the same route.

On that morning, I timed my approach to the Sepulveda Pass for 10:00 AM. With luck, the morning rush would be over, producing a lull before afternoon traffic built to yet another peak. All went well until I neared the intersection of I-405 and U.S. Hwy 101. There, traffic slowed to a crawl and did not regain equilibrium for the next ten miles.

As I ascended the Santa Monica Mountain grade, traffic snapped and bucked like a Chinese dragon. In terms of vehicular energy flow, it was equivalent to an acute myocardial infarction. As I approached the crest, I could see why our traffic moved so listlessly. Appearing atop the hill since my last visit, two enormous mobile cranes stood like sentries, one on either side of the freeway. From my viewpoint, the cranes appeared to be twice the height of the 100-foot tall bridge. The scene was so startling that traffic slowed to a crawl and then stayed that way until I was well beyond the construction scene.

Based on traffic delays alone, the current replacement plan makes no economic sense. Once this slow motion economic disaster is complete, Los Angelinos can then look forward to doing it all over again. From the coming Carmageddon II, right through construction and opening, those who drive in LA shall experience traffic jam déjà vu all over again. With the uncountable hours wasted by drivers sitting in traffic below, we hope that the hilltop locals who blocked the single-phase project are happy now.

Thanks to the local “design purity movement”, motorists will experience inconvenience for years to come. I wonder what the late Steve Jobs would think of this version of design purity. Unless he personally owned a house with an unobstructed view of the finished bridge, I doubt that he would have supported this cause.

As traffic loosened up, my vitriol for the Mulholland Drive locals faded from my consciousness. Traffic broke free near Wilshire Blvd. in West Los Angeles, and I sailed along at 65 mph. After crossing under Interstate I-10 (the Santa Monica Freeway), I observed a complete absence of vehicular traffic on northbound I-405. As I approached Venice Blvd., I witnessed the culmination of a California Highway Patrol traffic break on the northbound side of the freeway. Led by an animal control van, two CHP cruisers and several CHP motor officers sped away from a phalanx of stopped traffic that stretched for miles into the distance.

Listening to a later radio traffic report, I learned that someone had called to report an injured cat on the freeway. For the sake of that feline and in honor of the kind soul who reported it, perhaps 25,000 vehicles came to an extended halt on the busiest freeway in Los Angeles. Upon entering an LA freeway, a small animal’s chances of survival are almost nonexistent. I am an animal lover and have a pet cat myself. Still, I hope that iPhone toting animal lovers do not report every small animal that enters the roadway. If they insist on doing so, Los Angeles traffic may never move smoothly again.

On my return trip, later that day, I approached Sepulveda Pass from the south. From there I could see the Mulholland Drive Bridge and its attendant cranes. Silhouetted against the northern sky, the two cranes, new concrete bridge supports and the remaining bridge deck manifested as art. It is a sight so awe-inspiring that despite traveling uphill, many drivers involuntarily slam on their brakes. As traffic-engineers know, if enough motorists hit their brakes, somewhere behind them, traffic will stop. My morning traffic had stopped three or four miles short of the dramatic hilltop scene.

As witnessed by their reactions to car crashes and brush fires, LA motorists have a perverse relationship with those who trail behind them. During such events, the collective reaction is predictable. To themselves motorists say, “I’ve been delayed by the unknown and now I can see it, so I am going to slow down and gawk to my heart’s content”. That day, of course, group consciousness among LA motorists was true to form.

My slow trips through Sepulveda Pass that day allowed me to see the sights. If you hope to view this high art sculpture for yourself, come to LA before 2016. If you miss the first round of bridge building, plan your visit for the second round in 2013 or 2014. Perhaps Caltrans can rejoin both halves of the new Mulholland Drive Bridge by 2015. Then, hilltop homeowners can emerge from their survival shelters and enjoy the purity of design that they forced upon us all. Thank you again, local homeowners, for triggering the super slow motion Carmageddon that we now endure.

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By James McGillis at 02:06 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link

UCLA Student Rampage of 1966 Shuts Down the San Diego Freeway (I-405 Northbound) - 2011

 

 

UCLA Student Rampage of 1966 Shuts Down the San Diego Freeway (I-405 Northbound)

 

News Items for November 22, 1966Rose Bowl, I-405,San Diego Freeway,1966,

•      As luminescent debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle rains down on Earth, the Leonids Meteor Shower ends its first intense display in sixty-six years.   
•       The Rose Bowl snub in favor of USC. Twice, students marched onto the freeway and briefly stopped northbound traffic. On that Tuesday, only days after backup quarterback Norman Dow (in his first and only start) led the Bruins to an upset of USC at the Coliseum, The Times reported, obscenity-shouting protesters “left a trail of shocked and bewildered spectators.”
  
  The year 1966 was my first at UCLA and watching our underdog Bruins vanquish Troy was epic. To Bruin fans, the L.A. Coliseum felt like its counterpart in ancient Rome. After the victory, we left the Coliseum chanting “Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl”.
  Despite the UCLA win and otherwise equal records that season, a technicality bequeathed the Pac-8 title and a coveted berth in the Rose Bowl that year. Later the Pac-8 became the more familiar Pac-10. More recently, the conference morphed into an ambiguous NCAA entity known as the Pac-12. If the original Pac-8, then known as the Pacific Coast Conference had at least something to do with geography, the Pac-12 can make no such claim. Since many saw Arizona as another politically conservative suburb of Los Angeles, it was easy enough to rationalize stretching the Pacific Ocean into the Desert Southwest. However, even the most brazen sports fan would have a hard time making the case for the Pacific Ocean being anywhere near Utah or Colorado, where the 2011 conference additions dwell.
  Major Leonids Meteor Showers occur in thirty-three year cycles. Major closings of the I-405 are rarer still, with this one happening forty-six years later. Since 1998, the Rose Bowl has vaporized like a comet into the mind-numbing Bowl Championship Series (BCS). In January 2011, the TCU Horned Frogs played the Wisconsin Badgers at the Rose Bowl. Only the teams, their diehard fans and inveterate sports bettors know who won that game. Rather than being about geography, history and proud tradition, the Rose Bowl somehow morphed into a financial institution. Whether it is in support of sports betting or cold cash for the Tournament of Roses, it is all about the money now. Still, motorists on the I-405 can rest easy about a recurrence of the “UCLA Rampage” of 1966. Thanks to the BCS, it is unlikely that a victory in any future UCLA vs. USC game will affect commuters as they trundle up Sepulveda Pass toward The Valley. Will anyone in that line of cars chant, "Go Horned Frogs, go".
  On the afternoon of November 22, 1966, word got out on campus that UCLA “had been robbed” of their Rose Bowl berth. Almost immediately, spontaneous demonstrations started on campus.  Using tiredness as my excuse, I declined my friend Leonard’s fervent invitation to join the demonstrations.  Instead, I studied for a while and then fell asleep on an unmade bed in my dorm room.
  In that time of increasing political tension and sporadic campus violence, UCLA students were restive.  Still, our campus had not yet experienced any organized protests, as had happened up north at Berkeley.  From the drumbeat of Sgt. Barry Sadler’s Number one hit of 1966, “Ballad of the Green Berets”, we knew that an American war raged on in Vietnam. Still contested among LA riot aficionados is whether the 1996 UCLA Rampage was larger than the summer of 1966 Sunset Strip Curfew Riots. Those riots, associated with the closing of the nefarious Pandora's Box nightclub became world famous in 1967 when Steven Stills and the rock group Buffalo Springfield released their song, “For What it’s Worth”.  In the late fall of 1966, group consciousness on campus was looking for any excuse to get out of hand.  An unfair ruling by a commission of unnamed sports officials became the flash point for mob action.  
  In the early afternoon, a call to action swept through campus, with students yelling, “To the freeway.  Shut it down”. After the I-405 freeway closure, bonfires had flared into the night at campus demonstrations against the oh-so-important Rose Bowl berth.  Near midnight on November 22, 1966, Leonard came crashing into my room, still red-cheeked and sweaty from a long run uphill to the dorm.  Today, Leonard is a distinguished college math instructor and a published author.  That night, as I listened to his story, I wondered whether he had been one of the provocateurs.
  Interstate 405 is located over a mile from the UCLA campus, but undeterred by that distance; the demonstrators began their unruly march.  Down Westwood Blvd. they surged, and then west along Wilshire Blvd. to the freeway.  Once there, the mob scrambled straight up steep banks, or marched up the on-ramps and off-ramps to the San Diego Freeway.
  In the glare of afternoon sun, startled northbound motorists saw hundreds of young people chanting along the side of the freeway. Soon after their arrival, demonstrators began flagging down anyone who would stop. In the interest of safety, traffic slowed, and then one driver came to a halt in the slow lane. Lane, by lane, the budding anarchists proceeded, until all four northbound lanes of the I-405 freeway came to a complete stop.  Soon, highway patrol and LA Police arrived, threatening to arrest anyone who did not disperse. Like a school of fish, the crowds dispersed, and then reformed and retook the freeway. As more LAPD reinforcements arrived, officers with bull horns herded the crowd back to Wilshire Blvd. and then followed them on their long walk home.
  In my dorm room that night, Leonard was exultant.  Mobs could rule.  People had power.  He had been part of something bigger than himself, even if it was an anarchistic mob.  In an act of benevolent avoidance, my higher self had gently put me to sleep for the duration of events.  In that early version of what we now call a “flash mob”, there were no arrests or criminal charges filed. With impending wide scale protests against the Vietnam War, future demonstrations across the country were often less peaceful.
  With the benefit of forty-seven years of reflection, I believe that something important happened at both the UCLA Rampage and the more recent I-405 Carmageddon closures. Despite the divergent reasons for the closures, in each a bridge captured the public imagination. In 2011, California spent millions to topple half of a bridge, simply to add a carpool lane to the northbound side. In 1966, students discovered an energy bridge to their own future. Did stardust energy from Comet Tempel-Tuttle assist them in their peaceful, if raucous closing of the I-405?
  

  
  Dec. 4, 2012 - Reader Tom Conerly's comment:
  
  Thanks for posting the I-405 freeway photo from 1966. I searched for it to show my son in law. However, you might want to expand your blog...it was not just student unrest. After the announcement picking USC for the Rose Bowl, a bunch of us from Trojan Hall decided to do a victory lap, along UCLA's fraternity row.
  
  I was in the back seat of my roommate's Chevy Malibu SS 396 holding a speaker out the window, blasting the USC fight song. Behind us were at least 20 cars full of USC red and gold. As we made our second lap, hundreds of guys flooded out of the fraternities and chased us down Wilshire Boulevard. I remember running at least two red lights and barely escaping.
  
  Later after being radicalized, I did my best to "burn down USC", and married a UCLA girl, but that day in Westwood still stands out. All I mean from “burn down” was that I quickly lost any rah rah feelings for USC. I spent a lot of time at UCLA (Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee on the Janss Steps at noon for free) and always liked it there.
  
  See if you can find a pic of another of my seared memories-the 500 cop cars parked on the hill by the dorms in 1970.
  
  Dec. 4, 2012 - Jim McGillis' Response:

  Perhaps you are referring to the afternoon that fire alarms sounded almost simultaneously at Dykstra, Sproul, Rieber and Hedrick residence halls. Every police cruiser and fire truck in West Los Angeles headed for the dorms. There was so much apparatus on the streets that they created their own traffic jam. When first responders arrived, nothing was amiss, except for the sabotaged fire alarms.
  
  If we both recall the same episode, I wrote about that in my eBook. To keep the riff-raff out, I charge $.99 for the book. If you are not completely satisfied, the book has a 101% money-back guarantee. Ha!
  
  Although I will not disclose my sources, I knew both of the fire-alarm commandos. Although no one asked me to participate, I did little to discourage those who did. When four alarms sounded, the dispatchers at police and fire headquarters gave us everything that they had. Their heroic, yet futile response left me with an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
  
  Today, we might refer to such an act as domestic terrorism. Had the plot unraveled, there would have been several expulsions from UCLA that year, perhaps including me. How long is the statute of limitations on a crime like that?
  
  During the Radical 1960’s, many of us perpetrated antisocial acts against the institutions around us, sometimes even our schools. Looking back on it, there is no excuse for such antisocial activities.

  
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By James McGillis at 11:57 PM | Personal Articles | Comments (0) | Link

The I-405 Mulholland Drive Bridge Comes Down in Pieces - 2011

The I-405 Mulholland Drive Bridge Comes Down in Pieces

In 1962, my father and I drove thirty-miles from Burbank to Santa Monica, California. New that year and new to us was a 4.1-mile stretch of Interstate I-405. In true California fashion, the new freeway went straight up and over Sepulveda Pass. Its predecessor, Old Sepulveda Blvd. wound its way up and over a longer, more arduous route.

 

The new freeway featured four lanes in each direction, so traffic flowed with ease. A chain-link safety fence separated the northbound and southbound lanes. My father’s car was a 1962 Impala SS, with a 327 V-8 engine and a four-barrel carburetor. Gasoline was less than fifty cents per gallon and the speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour, which we easily reached.

 

At the top of the pass, the roadway curved gently to the right and then traveled under a marvel of a concrete bridge, spanning the freeway without any center support. Unlike any previous span in the Los Angeles area, the new Mulholland Drive Bridge was tall, graceful and elegant in its proportions. Despite its size and novel construction methods, the price tag for the bridge was only $1.8 million.

 

By 1964, my friends and I used “the i405” as our quick conduit to the beach in Santa Monica. On a good day, we could travel the thirty miles in less than an hour. Even though the freeway was less than three years old, parts of the concrete roadbed had started to shift and sag. This made the downhill run from the top of Sepulveda Pass to Sunset Blvd. a white-knuckle ride in my friend Bill’s 1957 Chevy Belair. As the road heaved and turned, we passengers held our breath at the approach to each turn. Although the classic Chevy looked cool, handling on a rough and curvy road was not its forte. As Bill clutched the wheel, The Rolling Stones', “Satisfaction” blared out of the car radio.

 

In 1962, California's population was seventeen million. According to the 2010 census, the population of California is more than twice that, now standing above thirty-seven million. Repaved and widened several times, the I-405 through Sepulveda Pass simply cannot handle twice as many cars as its designers intended. What is the latest solution? Widen it again, of course.

 

In order to squeeze a carpool lane into the northbound direction, the elegant and timeless Mulholland Drive Bridge will come down in halves, beginning mid-July 2011. If all goes as planned, our former “bridge to the future” will disappear by half over a three-day weekend. During the planned 53-hour closure, the southern half will come down in a cloud of construction dust and debris. Despite adequate warning to stay away from the planned freeway closure, you can bet that many in Los Angeles will not get the message. Oblivious or curious, they will head for the beach or the Valley that weekend. After all, freeway traffic jams, called sig-alerts in LA, are a time-honored tradition.

 

On that day in 1962, my father looked up at the bridge as we approached and asked, “Do you know how they built that?” In my awe of the whole scene, I said, “I have no idea. How did they do it?” “I read about it in California Highways," he said. "It's a free magazine, telling us all about our new freeways and how they build them. According to the magazine", he said, “they dug six holes almost one hundred feet deep into the mountain. Then they built the six support columns in those deep holes. Next, they built the bridge deck, which hovered just above old ground level. Although the support columns are solid, reinforced concrete, much of the horizontal structure is hollow. Rather than spanning that wide gulf with steel girders, the bridge relies on prestressed, reinforced concrete tubes to carry the load. After every aspect of the bridge was completed, workers with heavy equipment dug out all the earth beneath the bridge, slowly revealing its final height. It is towering above right now", he said as we passed beneath the shadow of the bridge.

 

Last winter I shot a few pictures of the Mulholland Drive Bridge, while traveling northbound in the afternoon rain. This week, I traveled in each direction over Sepulveda Pass and shot a few more images for posterity. After mid-July 2011, one half of this iconic bridge will be missing from the Los Angeles skyline. Until its two-phase bridge replacement reappears in several years, the I-405 through Sepulveda Pass will remain a work in progress, much as it has for the past fifty years.

 

In 1966, loss of a Rose Bowl berth to USC precipitated the "UCLA Rampage", which led to the first closing of the San Diego Freeway (I-405 Northbound).

 

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By James McGillis at 06:46 PM | Personal Articles | Comments (0) | Link