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It's been fixed! There is no longer an insane narrowing of the 280 Freeway in Santa Clara County.

UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS (8/15/21): They painted the final lines and messed it up again at Pagemill road (going down to three lanes and taking one as a dedicated exit and barely fixed the entry of the diamond lane... so it's still a little bit screwed up at one place... backups will not be eliminated entirely. DOH!


It seems the California Department of Transportation has taken my suggestions made four years ago and decided to repave the 280 freeway so that there are four continuous lanes for the entire trip between San Francisco and San Jose. 

My last report on this crazy backup causing 'improvement' was here: https://www.wiigf.com/2016/11/a-proposal-to-fix-unnecessary-freeway.html.

I pointed out that there was space to stop the backups and increase the traffic flow and was flabbergasted as to why they had designed the freeway to impede traffic flow. Now they've gone back and repaved it and fixed it. I have no need to repaint the lines anymore as the DOT has done it themselves! When they resurfaced the road this month, they repainted the lanes to increase the traffic flow. Finally!

I'm not sure if it was an accident or not. Maybe the theory of queueing has penetrated into traffic engineering. Seeing what they are doing to other nearby entrances and exits, I'm not so sure.

Anyway! Let's celebrate one more free-flowing freeway! Rebuilt like it was supposed to be built in the first place to maximize the movement of human beings. 

Thanks for reading.

 DrMike

 30 July 2021

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