Sunday, 04/29/07

For once, the word gets used non-metaphorically. A tanker carrying unleaded gas at 3AM through the East Bay's freeway tangle missed a turn, flipped over, and turned to slag an intensely important conduit between Oakland, Berkeley, and the Bay Bridge. SFGate's photos are amazing, and Google Maps shows the complexity of the freeway at this spot. Who needs terrorists, as mom put it.

I feel for my friends and family in the East Bay, though as an amateur transportation nerd, I can't wait to see how people adjust to this. It's a stake in the heart of what was already an intolerably bad traffic situation, and the obvious alternatives, like BART and the AC Transit bus system, do not have the instant capacity to absorb the extra ridership that this sort of disaster will produce.

It'll be an object lesson for Seattle for the increasingly likely case that waterfront viaduct falls down on its own while the city, county, and state bicker about how to replace it. 11:37AM «

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