Progress (Highway Engineering)

Only a couple of my rural runs incorporate twisties (which is why I try to make it to the Tail of the Dragon as often as I can).  Most of the Upper Midwest is rectangles of corn and soybeans, with the odd chicane where surveyors adjusted their lines 150 years ago or more.  Or a County Road jigs and jogs near a creek.

One County Road I use regularly tees into a State Highway, where you turn right for a quarter mile and then turn left on a different County Road, which esses around a creek bed and a small hill, posted for 35 m.p.h.  You can take the esses at north of 50, but one is tighter than the other, so this little segment is  challenging and fun: down and up through the gears four times with curves thrown in.

A problem with the T-junctions is that the State Highway curves over a brow at one of them (the other has clear lines of sight).  A close look is necessary to gauge if you have enough room to pull out.  How fast is that vehicle on the State Highway really going?  The intersection is not notorious, but it can be deceptive if your brain is on autopilot.

Last summer, new storm sewers and curbing were going in.  I thought they were for another new subdivision or two.  Subdivisions pop up like mushrooms in my little corner of exurbia.  But it turns out that the intersection is being fixed.  The County Roads will no longer jog for a quarter mile.  There will be a conventional crossroads, possibly with a stoplight.  They will then proceed on gradual, banked turns, eliminating the 35 m.p.h. squiggle.

The change is better for highway safety.  Traffic in the area has increased from "hardly any" to "more than occasional." A tricky crossroads has been made safer, and an ess that actually makes you drive your car has been eliminated.

But I will miss this short curvy relief from long stretches of straight roads.  We don't have that many challenging roads hereabouts, and another little segment is about to go under.  Bless the Allegheny Mountains.  Bless the Nantahala National Forest.  Bless the Great Smoky National Park.  Bless US 129, NC 28, and the Cherohala Skyway.  Bless the other roads in eastern TN and western NC that I haven't discovered yet.