Never Again

Yesterday, as I was leaving Balboa Park after a session of taking photos (results of which are here and here) I decided to take what should be the quickest route to northbound highway 163 and the start of the drive home.

I should have known better.

That route starts at this ramp off of Park Boulevard. The problem is the ramp almost immediately becomes one of five lanes that in a very short stretch funnel into one lane which in turn takes you onto northbound 163. An illustration and discussion of the problem is at this link.

As the son of a civil engineer who spent his entire professional career with Caltrans, I find myself somewhat more forgiving of the planning that went into this design than the writer of the blog linked to above, but only somewhat. I can easily imagine at the time this lane design was created, nobody was thinking that traffic volume would increase to the degree seen these days, thus creating the mess now seen there very frequently.

So, yesterday afternoon for some reason I thought the traffic into the the lane funnel wouldn't be bad, and made the turn into it. I couldn't have been more wrong; it was among the worst I've seen to date. (Sigh)

I made the decision there and then to never make that turn again if I can possibly help it. The alternative is to continue on Park Blvd. a relatively short and normally very quick distance and turn right onto this street; taking the next right puts one on a lane that is usually entirely clear and is a clean shot onto northbound 163.