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October 5, 2010
The Nightmare of Turkey Creek Canyon - US 285
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I'm trying to get some shots of the nightmare that is US Highway 285 through Turkey Creek Canyon. This is the place were Jennifer and I were very nearly crushed by a 60 ton boulder back in April.
This is a very dangerous canyon and it's only made worse by the morons in charge of the highways. I'm not clear who's doing the work in the canyon right now, but I can only assume it is being performed by CDOT.
In this dangerous stretch, US 285 drops from an elevation of 8,200 ft down to 5,280 ft at a 5% grade. At the bottom on the grade, the highway enters a series sharp turns. To keep cars from hitting each other head-on, someone wisely installed a Jersey barrier down the center, dividing the opposing lanes of traffic.
This barrier is so destroyed that words cannot do it justice. I shot some photos tonight (I finally felt well enough to go outside today.) The photos I shot today are of poor quality, as I was shooting from my motorcycle in low light. This road is very dangerous, as there is no shoulder to stand on. Turkey Creek forms the southern border, and the mountain is the northern border.
The City of Morrison operates a quasi-legal speed-trap in this canyon, which is nowhere near the town of Morrison, but somehow they annexed a section of this road so they could write speeding tickets for people going uphill. Hard to believe, but that's what they do.
In addition to the normal wear-and-tear of the Jersey barrier caused by 18 wheelers losing their brakes going down the 5% grade before they enter a series of tight switchbacks, the pigs decided that they needed to create a couple of turn-around points so that they could write more traffic tickets. That's right. They cut holes in the Jersey barrier so they could increase revenue. What's the worse that could happen?
I'm glad you asked. What could happen is some poor bastard could go head-on into their little illegal turn-around-point where they neglected to install a crash attenuator and get cut out of his car with the jaws of life.
Tonight, I took a ruler and measured the distance from the outside of the yellow line to the Jersey barrier. In 3 places, the distance is insanely small. In the location I measured, it was 4". And no reflectors, of course.
http://www.coloradodot.info/news/2010news/08-2010/turkey-creek-canyon-project-set-to-start
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Posted by Rob Kiser on October 5, 2010 at 8:50 PM
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