Over the years, we’ve all heard rumors of where freeways in our region were planned to be built before right-of-way was sold off to developers. While packing up my house, I happened across an old Thomas Guide my friend Mike brought to my house about eight years ago since he knows I have an affinity for maps. I finally got around to looking at it last week, and it shows the alignment of the freeways that were proposed at that time.
The guide is so old (“HOW OLD IS IT?” think Match Game) that it still shows I-5 south of downtown as a proposed freeway.
Here are some other proposed freeways:
Highway 65 was built in Placer County from I-80 to Lincoln, but the old plans show that it would have also crossed I-80 and continued either parallel to or along the alignment of what’s now Sierra College Blvd/Hazel Avenue. It would have connected with US 50 and continued just south of Highway 16 (Jackson Highway.)
Going west from Highway 65 at US 50 at the Sunrise interchange would have been Highway 244 that would have bisected Carmichael and Citrus Heights parallel to Fair Oaks Blvd, including another bridge across the American River. This would have met up with Highway 143 that would have meandered in a north-south direction through Carmichael in between Walnut and Garfield Avenues. Highways 244 and 143 would have met just east of Winding Way near Highway 80 (near American River College.)
Highway 143 would have also gone south of US 50 (also crossing the American River), all the way down to Elk Grove Blvd., where it would have met up with Highway 148 — which would have started at I-5 on the west, connecting I-5 with State Route 99, allowing for citizens in the south region easy access to 143 up to Rancho Cordova, Carmichael, etc.
What’s interesting is that the Regional Blueprint calls for major roadways along some of these same alignments, now that it costs millions more dollars to build what could have been done years ago.
We could “what if” the planning decisions to death. It would have been much easier for the suburb-to-suburb commuters to get around, but what would it have done to the neighborhoods along these freeways and highways? Would our air quality be worse than it is now?
I know that SACOG has plenty of transportation models that show how these beltways would affect traffic congestion and air quality, but I’m interested to know what you think about the impact these could have had. Would your neighborhood have a freeway running through it, or are you shaking your fist at the planners of yore for abandoning plans that could have saved you countless hours of drive time?
The Sac Rag 
Is there an overview map that you could scan? I’d be interested in seeing how all this looks on a map.
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This isn’t a bad representation:
http://www.cahighways.org/maps/1994sac.jpg
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That’s a perfect representation. I’d scanned a page from the Thomas Guide and enhanced it with Photoshop so the existing and planned freeways really stood out. It turned out to be a 16MB file, so it was way too big to upload as a jpeg onto this site — compressing the file made it too hard to figure out what was going on. So, thank you, sac-eats, for finding that link and posting it. I think I love you.
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Those plans were hella cool, and would have brought some actual efficiency to Sacramento’s commute.
Most of the corridors you mention were cancelled in November 1974 by a 3-2 vote of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors who caved in to the protests of a very vocal minority. Many of those same supervisors regret having made that decision, decades later.
Today, we have massive congestion on our arterials and freeways as a result. Today, the worst congestion is located on the few arterial crossings available on the American River east of Howe Avenue. That congestion backs up on to US 50’s offramps and onto US 50 itself.
As far as air quality issues go, automobile emissions from vehicles are far less than their 1960s and 70s predecessors. Most of the pollution nowadays is from trucks, buses, airplanes and general industry. Federal and State emission standards greatly reduced pollution from vehicles over the past thirty-plus years. I wouldn’t want to take a bong hit off a tail-pipe of a new car, but I would venture to guess it would safer than taking one from a 1975 Electra 225.
Freeway opponents have pushed light rail transit as an alternative to building additional freeways in the area since the 1970s. Has LRT reduced congestion? LRT boasts a daily ridership of 45,000 trips per day on the entire system(that’s 22,500 round-trip rides). When one considers that US 50 carries nearly 250,000 vehicles per day at Howe Avenue, I’d say we’re not getting much bang for our transporation buck. SACOG is a great supporter of LRT. We’ve had LRT since 1987, and I haven’t seen a reduction in congestion on our streets and freeways.
I’m all for building the planned Eldo Hills-Elk Grove Connector, Placer Parkway and a US 50-I 80 connector. However, most of SACOG’s long-range plans will only make matters worse. The original freeway plans would have accomodated Sacramento’s growth far and deep into the 21st century. And, yes, I grew up in several places in Sacramento, and some of those corridors (143 and 244) would have been right near where I lived. It wouldn’t have bothered me then or now.
There were other freeways planned you did not mention:
Route 16 (Jackson Highway) from US 50/Watt Avenue to the Amador County line.
Route 160 extended west to Interstate 5 near Richards Boulevard.
Interstate 80 built along Roseville Road (you can still see the half-finished ramps along the LRT lines at Roseville Road) joining the current-Business 80 near E Street.
A west bypass of Roseville (State Route 256) from I-80 at the Placer County line to Route 65 at Blue Oaks Road.
Freeport Boulevard as a freeway from Fruitridge Road south to Interstate 5. You can still see see this section of road. A major portion was built as a limited-access expressway with space for future interchanges and overpasses at Florin and Meadowview Roads.
A north bypass of Sacramento running east-west. State Route 102 would have started where Interstate 5 and Highway 99 meet near the airport. This route would have ran north of Elkhorn Boulevard and Greenback Lane. Once the route hit Folsom, it would head northeast and headed towards Auburn. The future “Placer Parkway” may take 102’s place.
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