Totally agreed, urbanlife. Increasing overall capacity of the freeway system in this area would mean additional lanes through, which this project doesn't propose. Getting those vehicles that are transferring from one highway to another off the through lanes creates a smoother transition, but as has been pointed out, the bottleneck will still exist. The merits of keeping the bottleneck or making through-capacity consistent could be argued, but to say this project 'increases capacity for the corridor' is a bit of a red herring.
From my perspective in Sacramento, I would LOVE to see a project like this here, more in relation to the capping and bridge projects. We have some ramping issues at the 1-5 and US 50 interchange, and if we could cap more of I-5 downtown where it cuts off the city from the river, that would be huge win. Not holding my breath that Caltrans would ever take that bold and needed step though. While not knowing all the gritty politics (and I suspect no one here does either, unless someone has an inside scoop...?), ODOT appears to have a well balanced proposal of highway-focused and city-focused aspects to this project.
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Riding out the crazy train
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