🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <FAIGIN.94Apr14130836@soldan.aero.org> faigin@aero.org (Daniel P. Faigin) writes:
>There may have been political agendas in the manner of construction; this is
>highlighted in the book LA Freeway from University of California Press. For
>example, the Harbor Fwy is submerged as it passes through South Central Los
>Angeles......

Daniel, this is less than a half-truth. The Harbor is below grade from
just south of MLK Blvd to just north of Slauson, or, in block terms,
from 40th street to 57th. On the other hand, it is above 
grade from Slauson all the way to Imperial, or, in block 
terms, from 58th Street to about 112th.
It is back below grade from Imperial to a bit south of Rosecrans, or
112th to 140th.

So what we have is 17 blocks below grade, then 64 blocks above grade,
followed by 28 blocks below grade. These figures add up to much more than half
of the freeway being above grade. So if they were consciously trying to
hide South Central, they didn't do much of a job of it.

The Hollywood Freeway is similarly built, with classic cut and fill
techniques. If you're going to have a grade separation with the
existing street pattern, you sometimes have to go over and sometimes
below. It's a zero-sum game - they don't usually bring (or haul away)
large quantities of dirt. They just move it around.

The most impressive instance of this was the building of the
San Diego Freeway through the (now) monstrous cut at Mulholland.
That cut used to be a mountain prior to the 1960's. (In fact, Sepulveda
Blvd., just before ascending to the tunnel, had a vicious hairpin 
curve right under where the freeway is now. The last half mile of
Sepulveda just south of the tunnel is an entirely new alignment.) 
The cut at Mulholland provided all the dirt to 
raise the freeway above grade all the way
across the Valley floor. I watched them do this in the 1961 time-frame.
A wooden bridge was built to carry the haul-road over the existing
Ventura Freeway. The dirt was carried, truck by truck, from the
Mulholland cut down the north face of the Santa Monicas, over the
wooden bridge, and out into the Valley, where it was dumped at the
gradually extending north end of the fill. It took 2 1/2 years to
accomplish (and, I believe, 9 billion cubic yards of earth moving).
I believe that it was the largest earth moving job in history up to that
time, and was superceded by the Aswan Dam.