highway

Sometimes, the best place you can go is a dead end. Especially when that dead end is surrounded by crashing surf on empty beaches, dramatic cliffs and lonely trails through forests thick with redwoods.

That’s the situation along Big Sur’s South Coast right now.

A chunk of the cliff-clinging highway has been closed for a series of landslide repairs since January 2023, making the classic, coast-hugging, 98-mile San Simeon-Big Sur-Carmel drive impossible. Caltrans has said it aims to reopen the route by the end of March 2026, if weather permits.

That means the 44-mile stretch from San Simeon to Lucia will likely be lonely for at least six more months. Travelers from the near north (Carmel, for instance) will need to detour inland on U.S. 101. Meanwhile, many Canadian travelers (usually eager explorers of California) are boycotting the U.S. altogether over President Trump’s tariff policies and quips about taking over their country.

And so, for those of us in Southern California, the coming months are a chance to drive, hike or cycle in near solitude among tall trees, steep slopes and sea stacks. The weather is cooler and wetter. But over the three October days I spent up there, the highway was quieter than I’ve seen in 40-plus years of driving the coast.

Moreover, those who make the trip will be supporting embattled local businesses, which remain open, some with reduced prices. Fall rates at the Ragged Point Inn, 15 miles north of Hearst Castle, for example, start at about $149 nightly — $100 less than when the road was open.

“It’s kind of perfect,” said Claudia Tyler of Santa Barbara, on her way from Salmon Creek Falls to two nights of camping at Plaskett Creek in Los Padres National Forest.

“I am sorry for the businesses…,” Tyler said, “but it’s good for the traveler.”

Further north, David Sirgany, 64, of Morro Bay, was getting ready to surf at Sand Dollar Beach, thinking about coastal erosion, climate change and this moment in history.

“To me,” he said, “it feels like the end of a time that will never be again.”

The closed area, known as Regent’s Slide, begins about 26 miles north of Ragged Point, toward the south end of Big Sur, and covers 6.8 miles. Thus, you’d need to detour inland via U.S. 101 to reach most of Big Sur’s best-known attractions, including the Bixby Creek Bridge, Pfeiffer Beach, Nepenthe restaurant, Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, McWay Falls and Esalen Institute.

But there’s plenty to explore on the stretch from San Simeon north to the roadblock at Lucia (milepost 25.3). Just be careful of the $8.79-per-gallon gas at the Gorda Springs Resort. (At $6.99, the Ragged Point gas station isn’t quite so high.)

Here, from south to north, are several spots to explore from San Simeon to Lucia. Be sure to double-check the weather and highway status before you head out.

See Hearst’s castle. Or just one of his zebras.

I’ve been hoping to see some of the Hearst zebras in the hills of San Simeon for years, and this time I finally did — a single zebra, surrounded by cows in a pasture beneath distant Hearst Castle.

That was enough to make my brief stop at the castle visitor center (which has a restaurant, historical displays and shop) well worth it. Other travelers, however, might want to actually take a tour ($35 per adult and up) of the 165-room Hearst compound (which is officially known as Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument).

The state park system’s visitor tallies from June through August show that 2025 was slightly slower than 2024, which was slightly slower than 2023.

Perhaps with that in mind, the castle last fall added “Art Under the Moonlight” tours, which continue this autumn on select Friday and Saturday nights through Nov. 16. The castle also decorates for the holidays.

If you’re spending the night, the Cavalier Oceanfront Resort has 90 rooms (for as little as $169) and firepits overlooking the sea.

San Simeon Bay Pier or hike San Simeon Point Trail

My southernmost hike was at the San Simeon Bay Pier. From the parking lot there, walk north on the beach and follow a path up into a eucalyptus grove. That puts you on the 2.5-mile round-trip San Simeon Point Trail (owned by Hearst Corp. but open to the public.)

At first, the route is uneventful and surrounded by imported eucalyptus (now being thinned) and pines. But there’s a payoff waiting at the point, where tides lap on a little sand beach, waves crash on dramatic black rocks and pelicans perch on sea stacks. Look back and you see the beach, the pier and the hills of the central coast sprawling beyond them.

Then, if you’re as hungry as I was, you rapidly retrace steps and head to the Seaside Foods deli counter in Sebastian’s General Store, a block from the pier. (I recommend the Coastal Cowboy tri-tip sandwich, $21. But you could also take your meal across the street to the Hearst Ranch Winery tasting room.)

Find the Piedras Blancas elephant seal viewing area, then go beyond it

California’s coast is a catalog of uncertainties, from rising tides and crumbling cliffs to private landowners discouraging public access. But we can count on the elephant seals of Piedras Blancas.

Once you pull off Highway 1 into the observation area parking lot, no matter the time of year, you’re likely to see at least a few hulking sea creatures flopped on the sand and skirmishing for position.

Because it’s a great spectacle and it’s free, there are usually dozens of spectators along the shore. But most of those spectactors don’t bother to follow the boardwalk north and continue on the Boucher Trail, a 1.9-mile path along the bluff tops and across a meadow, leading to striking views of sea stacks and Piedras Blancas Light Station.

(BTW: Visitors need an advance reservation to tour the Piedras Blancas Light Station. At press time, all tours were canceled because of the federal government shutdown.)

At Ragged Point, that Big Sur vibe kicks in

About 10 miles beyond the elephant seals, the raw, horizontal coastal landscape morphs into a more vertical scene and the highway begins to climb and twist.

Right about here, just after San Carpoforo Creek, is where you find the Ragged Point Inn, a handy place to stop for an hour or an evening. It has 39 rooms, flat space for kids to run around, cliff-top views, a restaurant, gift shop, gas station and a snack bar that’s been closed since the highway has been blocked.

Right now, this stretch of the highway “is a great place to cycle,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I wouldn’t do it at a normal time. But now the roads are uncrowded enough.”

To recover from the “frightening” drop in business when the road first closed, the inn has put more emphasis on Sunday brunch, the gift shop and live music on summer weekends, Ramey said.

At Salmon Creek Falls, roaring water meets tumbled rocks

At the Salmon Falls trailhead, 3.6 miles north of Ragged Point, there’s room for about 10 cars in the parking area on the shoulder of the highway.

When the highway is open, those spots are often all full. Not now. And it’s only about 0.3 of a mile to the base of the 120-foot falls, where there’s plenty of shade for the weary and boulder-scrambling for those who are bold. In the hour I spent scrambling and resting, I encountered just two couples and one family, all enjoying the uncrowded scene.

If you want a longer, more challenging hike, the falls trailhead also leads to the Salmon Creek Trail, a 6.6-mile out-and-back journey through pines, oaks and laurels that includes — gulp — 1,896 feet of elevation gain.

The yurts and quirks of Treebones Resort

Treebones, about 14 miles north of Ragged Point and 2 miles north of the rustic, sleepy Gorda Springs Resort, is an exercise in style and sustainability, producing its own power and drawing water from its own aquifer.

Born as a family business in 2004, Treebones has 19 off-the-grid units, mostly yurts, whose rounded interiors are surprisingly spacious. Its Lodge restaurant offers chef’s-choice four-course dinners ($95 each) and a sushi bar.

If you book a yurt (they begin at $385), you’ll find your headboard is a felted wood rug from Kyrgyzstan (where yurts go back at least 2,500 years). The resort also has five campsites ($135 nightly, advance reservation required) that come with breakfast, hot showers and pool access.

“For the last 20 years, we were basically 100% occupied from April through October,” assistant general manager Megan Handy said, leading me on a tour. Since the closure, “we’ve stayed booked on the weekends, but we’ve seen at least a 40% decline midweek.”

Once you’re north of Treebones, beach and trail possibilities seem to multiply.

Stand by the edge (but not too close) on the Pacific Valley Bluff Trail

Several people told me I shouldn’t miss the Pacific Valley Bluff Trail, a flat route that begins just north of Sand Dollar Beach. It runs about 1.6 miles between the roadside and the bluffs over the Pacific. Here you’ll see sea stacks in every shape, along with a dramatic, solitary tree to the north. In about 45 minutes of walking amid a land’s end panorama, I never saw another soul. Plenty of cow patties, though, and a few patches of poison oak, which turns up often near Big Sur trails.

A little farther north, I did run into four people walking the beach at Mill Creek Picnic Area. I found even more at Kirk Creek Campground, which was booked solid because it has some of the best ocean-view campsites in the area and it’s on the ocean side of the highway.

Big trees and a meandering creek at Limekiln State Park

Limekiln State Park is one California’s youngest state parks, having been set aside in the 1990s. But its occupants, especially the redwoods, have been around much longer.

And now, after park closures over storm damage and infrastructure issues and a reopening early this year, we have a chance to enjoy the place again. Or at least part of it. The park’s campground, Hare Creek Trail and Falls Trail remain closed.

But there’s still plenty of opportunity to check out the rare overlap of species from northern and southern California. As the Save the Redwoods League notes, “You can’t find both yucca and coast redwoods in very many parks.”

The park is about 4.4 miles south of the Highway 1 closure. Entrance is $10 per vehicle. I savored the 1.5-mile out-and-back Limekiln Trail, which is one of the best ways to see redwoods in the area. And once again, no fellow hikers.

Highway still too busy for you? How about an isolated lodge or a silent monastery?

Just south of the highway closure, the rustic, isolated Lucia Lodge and the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery, remain open for overnight guests.

But not everyone knows this. Unless somebody at Google HQ has just made a fix, Google Maps will tell you incorrectly that the hermitage and lodge are beyond the road closure. Nope. They’re both on the south side of the road closure, accessible to northbound traffic. And they’re both really quiet.

“People come here for silent, self-guided retreats,” said Katee Armstrong, guest ministry specialist at New Camaldoli Hermitage. Its accommodations, high on the slopes above the highway, include nine single-occupancy rooms and five cottages with kitchenettes ($145 nightly and up).

Meanwhile, on the ocean side of the highway, the Lucia Lodge’s 10 very basic units are visible from the road. Four of them are cabins that go back to the 1930s, when Highway 1 was new.

Some nights, there are only one or two guests, and those guests typically see no hotel employees, because there’s no lobby and the staff is down to a skeleton crew. (The lodge’s restaurant and lobby burned down in 2021.) The nearest restaurant is at Treebones, about 10 miles south.

“We have to have a conversation with every guest who books with us,” said Jessie McKnight, the lodge reservationist. Many “end up canceling once they understand the situation,” she said. “You’re kind of on your own.”

Ad yet, she added, “it’s so rare to experience Big Sur like this. Once the road opens, I think it’s going to be right back to being a zoo.”

A 24-year-old Honduran man who was fleeing federal immigration agents in Virginia died on a highway after being struck by a vehicle.

The death of Josué Castro Rivera follows recent incidents in which three other immigrants in Chicago and California were killed during immigration enforcement operations under the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Castro Rivera was headed to a gardening job Thursday when his vehicle was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, brother Henry Castro said.

Agents tried to detain Castro Rivera and the three other passengers, and he fled on foot, tried to cross Interstate 264 in Norfolk and was fatally struck, according to state and federal authorities.

Castro Rivera came to the United States four years ago and was working to send money to family in Honduras, according to his brother.

“He had a very good heart,” Castro said Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped by ICE as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and passengers were detained for allegedly living in the country without legal permission.

DHS said in a statement that Castro Rivera “resisted heavily and fled” and died after a passing vehicle struck him. DHS officials did not respond Sunday to requests for further comment.

Virginia State Police said officers responded to a report of a vehicle-pedestrian crash around 11 a.m. Thursday on eastbound I-264 at the Military Highway interchange. Police said Castro Rivera was hit by a 2002 Ford pickup and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The crash remains under investigation.

Federal authorities and state police gave his first name as Jose, but family members said it was Josué. DHS and state police did not explain the discrepancy.

Castro called his brother’s death an injustice and said he is raising money to transport the body back to Honduras for the funeral.

“He didn’t deserve everything that happened to him,” Castro said.

DHS blamed Castro Rivera’s death on “a direct result of every politician, activist and reporter who continue to spread propaganda and misinformation about ICE’s mission and ways to avoid detention.”

Similar deaths amid immigration operations elsewhere have triggered protests, lawsuits and calls for investigation amid claims that the Trump administration’s initial accounts are misleading.

Last month in suburban Chicago, federal immigration agents fatally shot a Mexican man during a traffic stop. DHS initially said a federal officer was “seriously injured,” but police body camera video showed the federal officer walking around and describing his own injuries as “ nothing major.”

In July, a farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic ICE raid at a California cannabis facility died of his injuries. And in August, a man ran away from federal agents onto a freeway in the same state and was fatally struck by a vehicle.

Tareen and Walling write for the Associated Press.

Oct. 24 (UPI) — A district attorney in Southern California has filed manslaughter and DUI charges against a 21-year-old man in connection with a highway crash that killed three people and injured several others.

Jashanpreet Singh, 21, of Yuba City, was arrested Tuesday after the semi-truck he was driving at a high rate of speed crashed into stopped traffic on the 10 Freeway West near Ontario, Calif.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson filed a four-count complaint Thursday charging Singh with three counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of driving while under the influence of a drug causing injury, with great bodily injury and multiple victims enhancements.

Three people were killed and at least three others were injured, at least two seriously, according to the complaint.

One of the deceased victims has been identified in court documents as Jamie Flores Garcia. The other two were identified as Jane Doe and John Doe.

Federal immigration authorities have identified Singh as an Indian citizen and an undocumented immigrant.

Anderson rebuked law enforcement over the crash, which he said “was easily avoidable if the defendant was not driving in a grossly negligent manner and impaired.”

“Had the rule of law been followed by state and federal officials, the defendant should have never been in California at all,” he said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday said it has lodged an immigration detainer for the suspect. It said Singh entered the United States in 2022 through the southern border and was then released into the country.

It blamed the Biden administration for the crash.

“It’s a terrible tragedy three innocent people lost their lives due to the reckless open border policies that allowed an illegal alien to be released into the U.S. and drive an 18-wheeler on America’s highways,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

The crash comes amid a political immigration fight, with the Trump administration seeking to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration and Republicans frequently blame the previous Biden administration and Democrats.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rebuked Democrat-run California for failing to “enforce my new rules for obtaining licenses to operate trucks.”

The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat feuding with President Donald Trump, responded that Duffy was manipulating facts “to score cheap political points” as the state does not determine commercial driver’s license eligibility.

“The FEDERAL government approved and renewed this individual’s FEDERAl employment authorization multiple times — which allowed him to obtain a commercial driver’s license in accordance with FEDERAL law,” it said on X.

“State rules and regulations for commercial driver’s licenses must be CONSISTENT with the standards set by FEDERaL law.”

Singh is to be arraigned Friday at the Rancho Cucamonga Superior Courthouse. No bail was set and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office said it will request the suspect not be granted bail due to the seriousness of the offense and his potential to be a flight risk.

Two buses travelling in opposite directions on the Kampala-Gulu Highway collided head-on while overtaking.

At least 63 people have been killed in a major road accident involving multiple vehicles on the highway between Uganda’s capital Kampala and the northern city of Gulu, police have said.

The collision took place just after midnight [21:00 GMT on Tuesday] and was caused by two buses coming from opposite directions trying to overtake a truck and a car.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

“In the process, both buses met head-on during the overtaking manoeuvres,” the Uganda Police Force said in a statement on X. “Sixty-three people lost lives, all occupants from involved vehicles.”

The police added that “as investigations continue, we strongly urge all motorists to exercise maximum caution on the roads, especially avoiding dangerous and careless overtaking, which remains one of the leading causes of crashes in the country”.

Those travelling in the truck and the car were injured and taken to Kiryandongo Hospital and other nearby medical facilities, the statement said. It did not give further details on the number injured or the extent of their wounds.

The Kampala-Gulu Highway is one of Uganda’s busiest as it connects the capital with the biggest town in northern Uganda.

Oct. 20 (UPI) — An artillery shell fired during a Marine Corps demonstration on Saturday detonated prematurely over California’s Interstate 5, striking a California Highway Patrol vehicle with debris, authorities said.

No injuries were reported, but the vehicle was damaged, CHP said Sunday in a statement.

The live-fire event at Camp Pendleton was part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ 250th Amphibious Capabilities Demonstration at Red Beach.

The incident occurred over a stretch of the I-5 where CHP officers were supporting a traffic break during the live-fire training demonstration.

The live shell was said to have detonated prematurely mid-air.

The Marine Corps has been notified of the incident, and additional live-fire demonstrations were canceled, CHP said.

“This was an unusual and concerning situation,” CHP Border Division Chief Tony Coronado, who identified himself as an active Marine, said in a statement. “It is highly uncommon for any live-fire or explosive training activity to occur over an active freeway.”

The demonstration involved elements of I Marine Expeditionary Force and U.S. Third Fleet, highlighting the Navy-Marine Corps’ “ability to project combat power globally, from ship to shore, with speed and precision,” the I Marine Expeditionary Force said Saturday in a statement.

“The CHP has filed an internal report on the incident, with a recommendation to conduct an additional after-action review into the planning, communication and coordination between federal, state and local governments around the event on Saturday, October 18, to strengthen protocols for future demonstrations and training events near public roadways,” it said.

Spokesperson Capt. Gregory Dreibelbis told CNN in a statement that the Marine Corps was investigating.

“We are aware of the report of a possible airborne detonation of a 155mm artillery round outside the designated impact area during the U.S. Marine Corps Amphibious Capabilities Demonstration,” Dreibelbis said.

“The demonstration went through a rigorous safety evaluation, and deliberate layers of redundancy to ensure the safety of fellow citizens,” he added. “Following established safety protocols, firing was suspended.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom had closed the section of I-5 ahead of the event as a precaution.

Ahead of the event, the Democratic governor lambasted President Donald Trump for scheduling the demonstration over the civilian transportation route.

“This president is putting his ego over responsibility with this disregard for public safety,” he said in a statement. “Firing live rounds over a busy highway isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous. Using our military to intimidate people you disagree with isn’t strength — it’s reckless.”

Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, and Trump have been in a very public feud for years. During Trump’s second term, Newsom has especially targeted Trump with criticism over his immigration policies and deployments of the military to Democratic-led states.

On Sunday, Newsom said, “this could have killed someone.”

“This is what the White House thought was fine to fly over civilians on a major freeway,” the California governor’s press office said in its own statement on X, which included a picture of a soldier carrying the large munition on his shoulder.

“Thankfully, the Governor closed it.”

TWO Brits have died after a family flipped their car in a horror highway crash in Turkey.

The family were visiting their hometown of Aksaray in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey when the tragedy unfolded.

4

4

Two members of the family died in the horror smash and three others were rushed to hospital.

The car was travelling on the Aksaray-Ankara highway when the driver lost control of the vehicle.

The motor smashed into the central median before rolling over.

Four members of the same family, the driver, his wife and their two children were rushed to hospital.

An elderly man, also in the car at the time of the horror smash, lost his life.

The drivers wife tragically passed away in hospital some time later despite the best efforts of doctors.

Police, gendarmerie and medical crews raced to the scene after receiving reports of the smash.

The four injured individuals were raced to Aksaray Training and Research Hospital in ambulances.

Doctors battled to save the lives of the young children and their parents.

Turkish authorities said an investigation into the accident is ongoing.

The family were reportedly from England and were in Turkey to visit family.

Turkish authorities said the driver lost control of the vehicle before the tragedy.

Local media claimed the family were on their way to visit the drivers father in law.

The Sun has contacted the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office for comment.

4

4

When the fires this year upended Los Angeles and put into question what it even means to return to normal, I was reminded of a chapter in “California Against the Sea” that had expanded my own understanding of what it takes to truly adapt our built environment — and to reimagine the places that we have come to love and call home.

This chapter, which opens with a radical shoreline reconfiguration just north of San Francisco, came not without controversy, but it provided a glimpse into what compromise might need to look like for so many communities struggling to keep up with climate change. Rather than hold the line with increasing futility, here was a humbling example of what can be possible when we transcend the throes of politics — and when we choose to set aside our differences and think beyond just reacting to the same disasters time and time again.

Since the book was published in 2023, the bridge described in the following excerpt has been completed, and the creek is finally free. Accommodating nature in this way called for some tough and unfamiliar changes, but go out to the beach today, and you can see the marsh starting to recover and the entire ecosystem gently resetting with the rhythms of the sea.

So much of the climate debate is still framed around what it is that we have to give up, but does it have to be this way? Rather than confront these decisions as though it’s our doom, can we embrace change and reconsider each effort to adapt as an opportunity — an opportunity to come together and build more bridges to the future?

Excerpted from “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline” by Rosanna Xia. Reprinted with permission from Heyday Books, © 2023.

A few winding turns past Bodega Bay, about an hour north of San Francisco, relentless waves pound against a stretch of coastline in dire need of re-imagining. Gleason Beach, once reminiscent of a northern version of Malibu, is now mostly just a beach in name. Sand emerges only during the lowest of tides. Bits of concrete and rebar are all that remain of 11 clifftop homes that once faced the sea. A graveyard of seawalls, smashed into pieces, litters the shore. Here along the foggy bluffs of the Sonoma coast, the edge of the continent feels more like the edge of the world — a window into the future if California does not change course.

These wave-cut cliffs, a brittle mélange of ancient claystone and shale, have been eroding on average about a foot a year, exacerbated since the 1980s by a hardened shoreline, intensifying El Niños and, now, sea level rise. With the beach underwater, the seawalls destroyed and so many homes surrendered, the pressure is now on Highway 1 to hold the line between land and sea. Year after year, residents have watched the waves carve away at the two-lane road — their only way to get to work, their only way to evacuate, their only way to reach all the rocky coves, beaches and seaside campgrounds that make this coast a marvel.

So, with every storm and every knock from the ocean, officials have scrambled to save the highway, pouring millions of tax dollars into a vicious cycle of sudden collapses and emergency repairs. From 2004 to 2018 alone, state transportation officials spent about $10 million in emergency defenses and failed repairs. In 2019, almost half a mile had to be reduced to one lane.

This lifeline for the region now hangs inches from the edge. The once spectacular coastline had seemingly morphed overnight — an apocalyptic transformation, decades in the making, seen with stark clarity now that orange caution tape and makeshift traffic lights mark what’s left of the shore.

“This is what unmanaged retreat looks like, and it is quite frankly a hot mess of septic systems, old house parts and armoring that have fallen into the intertidal zone with no real mechanism for cleaning it up,” Sonoma County supervisor Lynda Hopkins declared. “If we don’t start planning ahead and taking proactive measures, Mother Nature will make the decisions for us.”

With the realities of climate change looming ever closer, California transportation officials agreed it was time to try something different: make peace with the sea and move the crumbling highway more than 350 feet inland. They knew nailing down the details would be fraught, but, if done right, this would be the first radical effort by the state to plan for a reimagined coast — a coast that could support California into the next century. It was the rare managed retreat proposal that intentionally sought to both raise and relocate critical infrastructure far enough from the shore to make room for the next 100 years of rising water.

Compromise wasn’t easy. Officials studied more than 20 alternatives that tried to balance safety codes, traffic needs, fragile habitats, public access to the coast and other competing requirements that were tricky to meet given the topography. There were also all the nearby property owners who needed persuading, not to mention a skeptical, conservation-minded community that was averse to saving a human-altered shoreline with more human alterations. They ran into every argument and counterargument that have tugged, pulled and paralyzed other communities.

At its heart this project, like so many attempts along the California coast, called for a reckoning over what was worth saving — and what was worth sacrificing — and whether it was possible to redesign a treasured landscape so that it survives into the future.

“It seems daunting; it’s a lot of change to cope with, but it’s also an opportunity for communities to think about, ‘What are the coastal resources we want to have access to fifty, one hundred years from now?’” said Tami Grove, who oversees transportation projects for the California Coastal Commission and spent years reconciling all the emotional meetings, the disagreements, the many stops and stalls and hand-wringing compromises. “It gets lost, sometimes, when people are worried about everything that we’re going to lose to sea level rise — but there are things that we’re going to be able to choose and enhance and design into the future if we start planning now.”

In what many described as a major coup in government bureaucracy, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the coastal commission and county leaders set aside their differences to come up with a new solution together. By November 2020, they had hammered out a plan to relocate almost one mile of the highway — most notably with a new 850-foot-long bridge spanning Scotty Creek, a degraded stream that, choked for decades by the highway’s current configuration, rarely reached the ocean anymore. Rather than agonize over how to restore the landscape to some former, unobtainable baseline of “natural,” officials unanimously agreed that this bold re-imagining of the coast was the best way forward among no perfect options.

The concrete bridge (a monstrous overpass or a reasonable compromise, depending on who’s talking) will at least allow Scotty Creek to flow freely into the ocean again — making room for more red-legged frogs, Myrtle’s silverspot butterflies, and the passage of steelhead trout and coho salmon. Officials reasoned that elevating the highway would avoid paving over what’s left of the wetlands, which were already in desperate need of healing. By rerouting traffic onto a bridge, these drowning habitats would have the space to recover and migrate inland as the sea moved in.

State transportation officials also agreed, as part of the $73 million project, to pay $5 million to help clean up the mess of abandoned homes and failed road repairs. An additional $6.5 million will go toward wetland, creek and prairie restoration. Some of the old highway will be converted into a public coastal trail, and visitors will have access to a new parking area, as well as a beach that was once limited by private property.

Caltrans also set aside money to negotiate and acquire land from three private properties, including oceanfront portions of a historic ranch that will be most impacted by the realigned highway. Once completed, much of the open space will be transferred to Sonoma County to manage on behalf of the public.

This all came as a shock at first for Philip and Roberta Ballard, who own and live on the ranch, but they said they’ve come to understand the necessity of this project. The bridge still feels way too big — especially for this rural stretch of paradise that first captured their hearts more than two decades ago — but after years of meetings, questions and debating each trade-off, the retired couple decided to turn their energies toward making sure Scotty Creek got restored as part of the deal.

The creek, the largest watershed between Salmon Creek and the Russian River, has needed help since before they purchased the ranch, they said. In a past life, steelhead trout and coho salmon thrived in this stream. The once-abundant fish disappeared after the concrete culvert, installed in 1952 to support the highway, blocked their ability to migrate between fresh- and saltwater. The brackish habitat drowned over the decades. Then the creek, swollen after a series of big storms in the 1980s, flooded the lower plain. The stream banks were denuded of vegetation and the riffle crests obliterated as the choked stream tried to reach the sea.

Since 2004, the Ballards, both professors emeriti of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, have been piecing together ways to restore the creek, one small project at a time. Full restoration would require grading and reshaping the riverbanks, bringing back the native vegetation, improving water flow and re-creating the pools that once provided shelter to juvenile fish. The $6.5 million that Caltrans promised as part of the final deal will go a long way, they said, to nursing this entire ecosystem back to life.

“A lot of our efforts have gone into trying to make the best out of something that is necessary,” Roberta Ballard said. “We’ve arrived at feeling reasonably good about getting the best mitigation we can get for this region and getting something reasonably positive out of it.”

When we don’t understand and don’t allow for the ocean’s ways, we end up with homes perched on crumbling cliffs and seawalls still making a stand. Guided by a few mere decades of history and a narrow understanding of the California shore, many today know only how to preserve the version of the coast they learned to love. Rather than imagine a different way to live, we cling to the fragility of what we still have and account for only what we consider lost. Even remembering how wide a beach used to be, or how the cliffs once withstood the tide, glorifies the notion that resilience is measured by our ability to remain unchanged.

We fail to see how we’ve replaced entire ecological systems with our own hardened habitats, and then altered the shoreline even more once the shore began to disappear. Neither replicating the past nor holding on to the present is going to get us to the future that we need. Learning from the recurring cycles of nature, listening to the knowledge gained with each flood and storm, adapting and choosing to transform — this is what it means to persevere. Change, in the end, has been the only constant in our battle for permanence. Change is the only way California will learn how to live with, not on, this beautiful, vanishing coastline that so many people settled and still wish to call home.

Stefan Galvez-Abadia, Caltrans’s district division chief of environmental planning and engineering, is now attempting with his team to design a prettier bridge at Gleason Beach, one more fitting for the rural landscape. They’ve studied the arched columns of Bixby Creek Bridge on the Big Sur coast and other popular landmarks that have become iconic over time. They’ve conducted surveys on what color to paint the bridge — some shade of gray or brown, for example, or a more distinct hue like that of the Golden Gate Bridge. Donne Brownsey, who served as vice chair of the Coastal Commission at the time, remarked that the project reminded her of a concrete beam bridge in Mendocino County that spans the mouth of the Ten Mile River, just north of where she lives in Fort Bragg. “It was a new bridge, it caused a lot of consternation, but I didn’t know that the first few times I went over it — I would look forward to that part of the drive, because I could see the whole estuary to the west, and I could see the rivershed to the east,” she said. “You don’t even really see the bridge anymore because the swallows now all nest there, and it’s just part of nature.”

The bridge at Gleason Beach, facing similar design constraints as the Ten Mile Bridge, also has to be massive — a counter-intuitive twist to what one might think it means to accommodate the environment. Engineers had at first tried more minimal options — a shorter bridge, thinner columns, a less intrusive height — but many were not large enough in size or distance to outlast the coastal erosion projected for the next 100 years. And to give the wetlands enough space to grow back, the highway needed to be elevated at a landscape-wide scale.

Despite so many years of seminars and talks about climate change adaptation, turning an abstract concept like managed retreat into reality has been a delicate exercise in compromise, Galvez-Abadia said. There were few case studies to turn to, and each one he examined dealt with an increasingly complicated set of trade-offs.

“You don’t have many choices when it comes to sea level rise,” he said, flipping through almost two dozen renderings his team had tried. “Whichever way you choose, you’re going to have some kind of impact. These are the difficult decisions that we will all have to make as a region, as a community, for generations to come.”

As he filed away his notes and prepared to break ground, he reflected once more on all the years it took to reach this first milestone. The process wasn’t easy. A lot of people are still frustrated. Even more are disappointed. Many tough property negotiations still lay ahead, but he hoped, at least, to see the wetlands and creek recover beneath the bridge one day. If the native plants reemerge, the salmon return, and there still remains a coast that families could safely access and enjoy, perhaps this new highway — however bold, however different — could show California that it is possible, that it isn’t absurd, to build toward a future where nature and modern human needs could finally coexist.

Ask a random Angeleno to find Piru, Fillmore or Santa Paula on a California map and odds are they’ll shrug and give up. Blame it on location, location, location. Collectively known as the Heritage Valley, these small towns hidden on the stretch of Highway 126 are often ignored and bypassed by L.A. travelers bound for Ojai or Ventura.

But if you take the time to stop in this rural oasis, you’ll find miles of citrus groves, heaps of history and truly tasty Mexican food. Yes, there are more tractors than Tesla Superchargers in this region — that’s part of the draw. This, you realize, is what Southern California looked like before suburbia moved in.

Heritage Valley was previously known as Santa Clara River Valley, which is what the locals still call it. In 1998, a committee was assembled to help bring in tourists, and the new, jazzier label was coined. It was an improvement over an earlier, clunkier nickname, Santa Clara River Valley Heritage Trail, which sounded more like a hiking path.

It wasn’t the only title created for the sake of marketing. The town of Santa Paula has always proclaimed itself “the citrus capital of the world” for its abundance of lemons and oranges. Fillmore, not to be outdone, picked a gem: “The last, best small town,” which inspired a play of the same name that’s set there. Piru was already born with a compelling handle when its devoutly religious founder proclaimed it as “The Second Garden of Eden” in 1887. Today, it’s better known for its popular outdoor recreational area, Lake Piru. (After “Glee” actress Naya Rivera drowned in the lake in 2020, swimming was temporarily banned. It’s now allowed, but only in designated areas between Memorial Day and Labor Day.)

If you go back hundreds of years before Lake Piru was created by the construction of the Santa Felicia Dam, you’d see Chumash villages dotting the valley. Then came the Spanish expeditions in the late 18th century, followed by ranchos that used the land for sheep and cattle. Soon the railroads arrived, and then an oil boom. The valley’s eventual transformation into an agricultural mecca was hastened by a Mediterranean climate that proved ideal for crops — first citrus, then avocados.

But along with the bounty there were disasters, both natural and man-made, including the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and the catastrophic flood from the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse. Numerous fires also have made the valley live up to a Times article that called it “among the most dangerous wind and fire corridors in Southern California.”

Yet through it all, the population has steadily grown and more travelers are discovering the area for its lively gatherings (the Santa Paula Citrus Music Festival took place last week), new attractions (check out the 17-mile Sunburst Railbike experience) and stunning hikes. Here’s where to go on a road trip along Highway 126.

A coalition of groups including environmental activists and Native Americans advocating for their ancestral homelands converged outside an airstrip in the Florida Everglades on Saturday to protest the imminent construction of an immigrant detention center.

Hundreds of protesters lined part of U.S. Highway 41 that slices through the marshy Everglades — also known as Tamiami Trail — as dump trucks hauling materials lumbered into the airfield. Cars passing by honked in support as protesters waved signs calling for the protection of the expansive preserve that is home to a few Native tribes and several endangered animal species.

Christopher McVoy, an ecologist, said he saw a steady stream of trucks entering the site while he protested for hours. Environmental degradation was a big reason why he came out Saturday. But as a south Florida city commissioner, he said concerns over immigration raids in his city also fueled his opposition.

“People I know are in tears, and I wasn’t far from it,” he said.

Florida officials have forged ahead over the last week in constructing the compound dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” within the Everglades’ humid swamplands.

The government fast-tracked the project under emergency powers from an executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis that addresses what he casts as a crisis of illegal immigration. That order lets the state sidestep certain purchasing laws and is why construction has continued despite objections from Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.

The facility will have temporary structures such as heavy-duty tents and trailers to house detained immigrants. The state estimates that by early July, it will have 5,000 immigration detention beds in operation.

The compound’s proponents have said its location in the Florida wetlands — teeming with alligators, invasive Burmese pythons and other reptiles — makes it an ideal spot for immigration detention.

“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “No one’s going anywhere.”

Under DeSantis, Florida has made an aggressive push for immigration enforcement and has been supportive of the federal government’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has backed Alligator Alcatraz, which Secretary Kristi Noem said will be partly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Native American leaders in the region have seen the construction as an encroachment onto their sacred homelands, which prompted Saturday’s protest. In Big Cypress National Preserve, where the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport is located, 15 traditional Miccosukee and Seminole villages remain, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites.

Others have raised human rights concerns over what they condemn as the inhumane housing of immigrants. Worries about environmental effects have also been at the forefront, as groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Friends of the Everglades filed a lawsuit Friday to halt the detention center plans.

“The Everglades is a vast, interconnected system of waterways and wetlands, and what happens in one area can have damaging impacts downstream,” Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said. “So it’s really important that we have a clear sense of any wetland impacts happening in the site.”

Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesperson, said Friday in response to the litigation that the facility was a “necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a preexisting airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment.”

Until the site undergoes a comprehensive environmental review and public comment is sought, the environmental groups say construction should pause. The facility’s speedy establishment is “damning evidence” that state and federal agencies hope it will be “too late” to reverse their actions if they are ordered by a court to do so, said Elise Bennett, a Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney working on the case.

The potential environmental hazards also bleed into other aspects of Everglades life, including a robust tourism industry where hikers walk trails and explore the marshes on airboats, said Floridians for Public Lands founder Jessica Namath, who attended the protest. To place an immigration detention center there makes the area unwelcoming to visitors and feeds into the misconception that the space is in “the middle of nowhere,” she said.

“Everybody out here sees the exhaust fumes, sees the oil slicks on the road, you know, they hear the sound and the noise pollution. You can imagine what it looks like at nighttime, and we’re in an international dark sky area,” Namath said. “It’s very frustrating because, again, there’s such disconnect for politicians.”

Seminera writes for the Associated Press.

As we drove north along Highway 395 — passing the salty remains of Owens Lake, the Museum of Western Film History, the geothermal plant outside Mammoth Lakes that supplies 24/7 clean energy to San Bernardino County — I felt certain we’d found the northernmost reaches of Southern California.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and my wife and I were headed to a U.S. Forest Service campground in the White Mountains, 225 miles as the crow flies from downtown L.A.’s Union Station. If you drew a line on a map due west from our campsite, you’d cut through the Sierra Nevada and eventually hit San José.

But to my mind, we were still in Southern California.

For one thing, Southern California Edison supplied electricity here. For another, Los Angeles had sucked this place dry.

In the early 1900s, agents secretly working for the city posed as farmers and ranchers, buying up land and water rights in the Owens Valley. Then Los Angeles built an aqueduct, diverting water from the Owens River to feed the city’s growth. Owens Lake largely dried up. The city later extended the aqueduct north to Mono Lake.

As a lifelong Angeleno, I felt compelled to see some of the results for myself.

I had spent time in the Owens Valley, but never the Mono Basin. So we took a dirt road branching off the gorgeous June Lake Loop to stand atop an earthen dam built by L.A. in the 1930s. It impounds Rush Creek, the largest tributary bringing Sierra snowmelt to Mono Lake. As I looked out at Grant Lake Reservoir — beautiful in its own way, if totally unnatural — I realized I had been drinking this water my whole life.

My feelings were similarly muddled when we arrived at Mono Lake.

On the one hand, this was one of the coolest and weirdest places I’d ever seen. As we padded along a boardwalk toward the sandy southern shore, I was blown by the gleaming blue water, the snow-capped Sierra peaks and the tufa — my gosh, the tufa. Bizarre-looking rock towers made of calcium carbonate, like something from a dream.

At the same time, much of the boardwalk ideally would have been underwater.

Under a 1994 ruling by state officials, L.A. is supposed to try to limit its withdrawals from Mono Lake’s tributaries, with a goal of restoring the lake to an elevation of 6,392 feet — healthier for the millions of migratory and nesting birds that depend on it for sustenance, and better for keeping down dust that degrades local air quality.

Three decades later, the lake has never gotten close to its target level. L.A. continues to withdraw too much water, and the Mono Basin continues to suffer. Mayor Karen Bass said last year that the city would take less, but officials ultimately reneged, citing a dry winter.

As we walked past a sign on the way to the southern shore marking 6,392 feet, I felt a little pang of guilt.

Responsibility is a funny thing. When we got back from our camping trip, I read about a woman suing oil and gas companies over the tragic death of her mom, who died of overheating at age 65 during a historic heat wave that roasted the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit claims wrongful death, alleging — accurately — that the companies spent years working to hide the climate crisis from the public.

I’m neither a psychic nor a psychologist. But I’m guessing, based on more than a decade reporting on energy and climate change, that executives at the fossil fuel companies in question — including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and Shell — aren’t suddenly feeling guilty for their role in boiling the planet.

Same goes for the Trump administration — impossible to guilt. The World Meteorological Organization reported last week that Earth is highly likely to keep shattering temperature records in the next few years, driving deadlier heat waves, more destructive fires and fiercer droughts. That hasn’t stopped President Trump and congressional Republicans from pressing forward with a budget bill that would obliterate support for renewable energy.

So why was I, a climate journalist, feeling guilty over something I really had nothing to do with? Was it silly for me to bother taking responsibility when the people wrecking the planet were never going to do the same?

I think the answers have something to do with the importance of honesty.

As we sat at our campsite by a roaring fire — stoked by my wife, who’s way better than me with open flames — I cracked open a book of speeches by President Theodore Roosevelt, delivered in 1903 on his first trip to California. He was on my mind because he’d originally established Inyo National Forest, where our spectacular campground was, to protect the lands and watershed where Los Angeles would build its Owens Valley aqueduct.

“You can pardon most anything in a man who will tell the truth,” Roosevelt said. “If anyone lies, if he has the habit of untruthfulness, you cannot deal with him, because there is nothing to depend on.”

“The businessman or politician who does not tell the truth cheats; and for the cheat we should have no use in any walk of life,” he said.

Naturally, I thought of Trump, whose political success is built on outrageous lies, from climate and election denial to insisting that Haitian immigrants eat their neighbors’ cats. I also recalled a recent order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum discouraging “negative” depictions of U.S. history on signs at national parks and other public lands — a directive with the Orwellian title, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Did that mean educational materials at Manzanar National Historic Site — which sits just off Highway 395 and is managed by the National Park Service — would soon be revamped, to avoid explaining how the U.S. government cruelly and needlessly imprisoned more than 10,000 Japanese Americans there during World War II?

If a similar order were issued covering the Forest Service, which is overseen by a different federal agency, would the Mono Lake visitor center take down its thoughtful signs explaining the history of the Los Angeles water grab? Would the Forest Service alter a sign at the nearby Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest detailing the possible impacts of global warming, considering that the U.S. is the largest historical emitter of heat-trapping pollution?

Only time will tell. But Teddy Roosevelt was right. So long as Trump and his allies keep lying — pretending that oil and gas aren’t cooking the planet, that we don’t need sound science, that Americans have only ever done good — they’ll feel no guilt, no responsibility. Because they’ll have nothing to take responsibility for.

Accepting the facts means owning up to the hard ones.

It’s not just politicians who have trouble. Highway 395’s Museum of Western Film History is mostly hagiography, a collection of props and artifacts that fails to unpack the settler colonialism behind the western films it glorifies.

But I did learn that the original “Star Wars” was one of many films to shoot footage in the Owens Valley. And the “Star Wars” universe, as it happens, is all about fighting an empire that seeks to control people’s homelands and histories — a message central to Season 2 of “Andor,” now streaming on Disney+.

“I believe we are in crisis,” says Galactic Senator Mon Mothma, a leader of the brewing Rebellion. “The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.”

Here’s the truth: There’s not enough water in Mono or Owens lake. It’s hotter than it used to be. The sky is dark with wildfire smoke more often. The Sierra Nevada peaks frequently aren’t as snowy.

Again, the senator: “When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

In America, monsters are screaming. Find harbor in honesty, and perhaps the mountains.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

A roughly 11-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway is set to reopen Friday ahead of Memorial Day weekend, reconnecting Malibu to the Westside after months of closures.

But less than 48 hours before the planned reopening, the state said Wednesday that it remains “in the dark” regarding the city of Los Angeles’ plans for providing security to the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades area just off the highway.

Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl countered that the mayor did, in fact, have a plan to keep the area secure and closed to non-residents.

“As PCH is reopened, we will have a strict security plan in place, as we have for months,” Seidl said Wednesday afternoon. He did not immediately respond when asked whether he had shared the city’s plan with the state.

The leader of the state’s emergency services agency sent a sharply worded letter earlier Wednesday to a senior official in Mayor Karen Bass’ administration, chiding the city for not answering questions despite weeks of outreach from the state.

As of Wednesday morning, the mayor’s office had yet to provide the state with a plan for how it plans to provide security to the Palisades as part of the reopening, or whether it plans to establish new security checkpoints on arterial streets into the community, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Times.

Seidl said Wednesday afternoon that the city would put new checkpoints in place, though he did not provide specifics.

The affluent coastal enclave has remained closed to the public since the devastating January wildfire, months after other fire-damaged neighborhoods reopened. But with the California National Guard set to leave at the end of the month, officials must decide how to move forward. There seems to be a consensus among both state and local officials that the neighborhood should remain closed to the public, though the logistics of that decision remain an open question.

Checkpoints currently block public access at major ingress points to the community. But the reopening of PCH would necessitate several new checkpoints.

“Over the last few weeks, Cal OES has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and City staff and officials – including as recently as yesterday – offering technical and financial resources to support the City as it develops a security plan,” Nancy Ward, who leads the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, wrote in the letter, saying the state would also provide financial support for federal reimbursement-eligible security costs.

“Despite this outreach, we remain in the dark regarding the City’s plans and have heard that the City may request a multi-week delay of the reopening of PCH – despite the incredibly hard work by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Caltrans, and many others to facilitate the reopening for Memorial Day,” Ward wrote.

Seidl said the city was not requesting a delay to the reopening.

The letter was sent from Ward to deputy mayor for public safety Robert Clark, Bass’ top aide overseeing police and fire issues.

Though she stopped short of directly criticizing Bass, Traci Park — the Los Angeles city council member who represents the Palisades — also expressed frustration with the process and lack of clarity.

“For months, Councilmember Park sounded the alarm on safety and called for a formalized plan from departments and consultants through the LA Recovery Committee, which she chairs. None have been forthcoming,” Park spokesperson Pete Brown said.

Concerned about the lack of movement, Park submitted her own proposal to the governor for Palisades safety as the highway reopens, Brown said.

The governor’s office had reached out to Park with concerns about the situation, according to someone familiar with the issue who was not authorized to speak publicly.

In late January, Bass briefly announced plans to reopen the Palisades to the public before reversing course less than 30 hours later after widespread outcry from community members who said the checkpoints should remain in place.

Newsom previously announced last month that the highway would reopen by the end of May, though he did not provide a specific date. His office declined to comment on the letter.

The soon-to-reopen section of highway, which spans from Chautauqua Boulevard just north of Santa Monica to Sweetwater Canyon Drive in Malibu will operate two lanes of traffic in both directions, according to a CalTrans document.

Picture a four‑lane highway at 5 p.m. The sun is dipping, brake lights flare, and every driver wonders the same thing—Why can’t this road move faster? Engineers answer that question with highway capacity analysis. By measuring how many vehicles a road can carry while staying safe and comfortable, they guide billion‑dollar investments and everyday signal‑timing tweaks alike.

Whether it’s Transportation engineering services in Florida working to untangle I-95 or a city planner fine-tuning a small-town corridor, the same principle holds: without solid capacity numbers, agencies over- or under-build. Budgets blow up, and the public loses faith. With them, planners can widen lanes only where they earn payback, fine-tune merge zones to shave minutes off commutes, and prioritize bus routes that truly cut congestion. Capacity analysis is the flashlight that shows where every extra dollar or lane will do the most good.

Highway Capacity Analysis Core Ideas—Demystified

Before diving into software and formulas, nail down three cues that steer the entire discipline:

1. Flow (vph) – How many vehicles pass a point in one hour?
2. Density (veh/mi) – How tightly those vehicles pack together.
3. Speed (mph) – Self‑explanatory, yet the first metric angry drivers quote.

The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) ties those three variables together. If flow rises beyond a corridor’s sweet spot, density balloons, speed tumbles, and frustration spikes. Capacity analysis finds the balance where people move quickly yet safely.

Data Collection: The Bedrock of Good Numbers

Fancy models collapse without real‑world data. At a minimum, analysts gather:

• Traffic counts – 15‑minute or hourly volumes at each approach, ideally for multiple typical days.
• Speed runs – Spot speeds from Bluetooth sensors, radar, or test vehicles.
• Geometry – Lane widths, grades, curvature, shoulder condition, and sight distance.
• Control type – Signals, stop signs, roundabouts, or no control.
• Heavy vehicle mix – Trucks and buses chew up more space.
• Peak vs. off‑peak behavior – Commuter corridors flip personalities throughout the day.

Modern crews lean on drone footage, LiDAR, and connected‑car feeds. Yet old‑fashioned tube counters and manual turning‑movement surveys still earn their keep, especially when verifying anomalies an algorithm can’t explain.

Analytical Techniques in Plain English

1. Deterministic (HCM‑Style) Methods

These follow printed equations and default adjustment factors. Plug counts and geometric traits into tables, and out pops an estimate of volume‑to‑capacity ratio, delay, or level of service (LOS). Use them when budgets are tight, data are sparse, or agencies require HCM compliance.

2. Microscopic Simulation

Programs like VISSIM or Aimsun track each car, truck, and bus as a unique “agent.” The engine updates position every fraction of a second, letting analysts test lane closures, variable speed limits, or adaptive ramp metering in a risk‑free sandbox.

Pros

• Rich visuals that win stakeholder buy‑in
• Captures driver psychology (gap acceptance, lane changing)

Cons

• Steeper learning curve
• Heavy on calibration time

3. Mesoscopic and Macroscopic Models

Mesoscopic engines (e.g., DynusT) blend grouped traffic packets with individual behavior, offering a sweet spot between speed and realism. Macroscopic packages (e.g., VISUM) aggregate entire links, perfect for regional freight forecasts or policy studies looking 20 years ahead.

4. Hybrid AI Boosters

Machine learning now hunts patterns across billions of GPS pings, updating capacity values daily instead of yearly. Cloud dashboards alert operators the moment recurring bottlenecks drift outside normal bands—no spreadsheet macros required.

Tool	Best For	Quick‑Hit Strengths	Watch‑Outs
Highway Capacity Software (HCS‑7)	HCM chapter compliance: quick studies	Wizard‑style inputs, batch LOS reports	Limited animation; needs external graphics for public outreach
SIDRA Intersection	Roundabouts, signals in mixed traffic	Built‑in micro‑sim, queue spillback warnings	License per seat; may require regional default tweaks
Synchro & SimTraffic	Signal timing, corridor coordination	Fast offset optimization, density plots	Microscopic module less robust than VISSIM for multilane weaving
PTV VISSIM	Detailed lane‑level trials (managed lanes, transit)	Driver behavior libraries, API scripting	Demands strong calibration discipline; can overwhelm new users
Aimsun Next	Hybrid micro‑/meso networks; real‑time DSS	Single file houses micro, meso, macro; live feeds	GPU requirements climb with city‑wide meshes
PTV Vistro	Development impact studies	ITE trip‑generation baked in; clean LOS diagrams	Less suitable for freeway weaving or managed‑lane ops

Pro tip: License more than one tool when budgets allow. Deterministic LOS tables catch red flags early; simulation then focuses time on the sharpest pain points.

From Field to Model—and Back Again

Seasoned analysts never trust a first run. They:

1. Pre‑calibrate driving styles using free‑flow speed surveys (no congestion).
2. Seed observed volumes across peak hours.
3. Tweak car‑following, lane‑change aggressiveness, and reaction times until simulated speeds, queues, and delays echo what cameras recorded.
4. Stress‑test future year scenarios (population growth, lane closures, special events).
5. Ground‑truth periodically—spot checks tell you when commuters evolve faster than your defaults.

This loop keeps models honest and prevents the dreaded “garbage in, gospel out” trap.

Emerging Trends You Should Track Now

1. Connected Vehicle Probes – Tens of millions of anonymized GPS traces stream instant speed and density snapshots, wiping out expensive manual counts.
2. Edge‑Based Simulation – Lightweight models run on roadside units, adjusting ramp meters in real time without waiting for a central server.
3. Digital Twins – Continuous 3‑D replicas ingest live detector data, construction schedules, and weather forecasts, showing what the network will look like 30 minutes ahead.
4. Equity Dashboards – Capacity fixes now score on access to opportunity, not just travel time. Analysts overlay demographic layers to ensure low‑income communities benefit instead of simply bearing detour fumes.

Turning Numbers Into Smoother Journeys

Highway capacity analysis might sound like pure math, yet its heartbeat is human. Behind every VPH figure sit nurses racing to shifts, parents dashing to day‑care pick‑ups, and truck drivers fighting delivery windows. When engineers pair solid field data with the right software, they give those travelers time back—and often save money and fuel in the process.

From quick HCM look‑ups to advanced AI‑driven twins, the techniques outlined here equip any practitioner to diagnose today’s chokepoints and sketch tomorrow’s fixes with confidence. Stay curious, keep calibrating, and remember: a well‑tuned corridor is the quiet success story commuters never notice—because they’re already home.

La Super-Rica is a California original, a culinary mecca in a taco shack setting devoted to chile, cheese, charred meat and masa. It’s true that there are other Santa Barbara taquerias with more inventive salsas (pistachio at Mony’s) or adventurous cuts of meat (beef head, cheek or lip tacos at Lilly’s, with eye and tripas on weekends). And, yes, you will be standing in the fast-moving line with other out-of-towners who may have read about the long-ago accolades from Julia Child or spotted a replica of the white-and-aqua stand in Katy Perry’s “This Is How We Do” video. Yet as an Angeleno with hometown access to some of the world’s best tacos from nearly every Mexican region, I rarely pass the Milpas Street exit off the 101 without joining the crowd. My late husband and this paper’s former restaurant critic, Jonathan Gold, was a Super-Rica partisan, and both of my now-grown children remain loyal to the restaurant founded in 1980 by Isidoro Gonzalez. But it’s not nostalgia that brings me back. I’m here for the tacos de rajas, strips of pasilla chiles, onions and cheese melded onto tortillas constantly being patted and pressed from the snow drift of masa behind Gonzalez as he takes your order; for the crisp-edged marinated pork adobado, either in a taco or in the Super-Rica Especial with pasillas and cheese; for the chorizo, sliced and crumbled into a bowl of queso; or for the tri-tip alambre with sauteed bell peppers, onion and bacon. It’s never easy to decide, especially with Gonzalez’s board of specials. But I never leave without Super-Rica’s soupy, smoky pinto beans with charred bits of chorizo, bacon and chile.