No Solution in Sight for Rain-Caused Traffic Chaos; MLK’s Daughter Bemoans a Lack of Progress–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Jan. 16, 2023

Indy Digest: Jan. 16, 2023

People coming from Desert Hot Springs or Interstate 10 into the western Coachella Valley have five plausible routes: Palm Canyon Drive/Highway 111; Indian Canyon Drive; Gene Autry Way; Date Palm Drive/Vista Chino; and Bob Hope Drive/Ramon Road.

For the second time in a week, three of those five routes are closed (as of this writing). As a result, for the second time in a week, traffic in the western Coachella Valley is a mess.

The problem is that these three closed routes—Indian Canyon, Gene Autry and Vista Chino—all go through a wash that’s normally dry. But we’ve received an abnormal amount of rain as of late, and the wash is decidedly not dry.

We’re coming up on the four-year anniversary of one of the craziest storms ever to hit the Coachella Valley. On Valentine’s Day of 2019, the Palm Springs International Airport recorded 3.69 inches of precipitation—the third-most ever recorded at PSP. That storm closed the aforementioned three routes, as well as Palm Canyon Drive/Highway 111, meaning Ramon Road was the only available option to get from the freeway into Palm Springs. On that day, it took me more than an hour to get from Avenida Caballeros to the PetSmart on Ramon Road. On a normal day, that’s a 10-minute drive.

In the aftermath, we ran a piece asking the question: “What are local governments doing to shore up infrastructure affected by the Valentine’s Day flood?” In March 2019, Kevin Fitzgerald talked to, among others, Marcus Fuller, then the assistant city manager and city engineer for Palm Springs:

In Palm Springs, Fuller wrote that the city has been getting federal help for infrastructure improvements.

“The city has aggressively pursued federal funding through what was formerly called the Highway Bridge Program to replace, widen (and) retrofit/rehabilitate its existing bridges, and we currently have six different federally funded bridge projects underway,” he said.

Some $150 million in federal funding is committed to six projects, which include replacing the two-lane bridge over the railroad tracks on Indian Canyon Drive with a new six-lane bridge; a new raised roadway and bridge/culvert across South Palm Canyon Drive at Bogert Trail; widening the Ramon Road bridge over the Whitewater Wash from four lanes to six; and a new half-mile, four-lane bridge on Vista Chino over the wash.

Unfortunately, not all needed projects have been approved. Fuller said that the state—using federal funds—did OK a 2015 request for a new, two-mile bridge on Indian Canyon Drive over the entire 100-year flood plain of the Whitewater Wash. But …

“The state accepted our application but did not approve programming any funding, as the total amount of the project nearly represents the total funding that the state receives from the federal government for the total (Highway Bridge Program) fund in any single year.

“Then, on Oct. 1, 2016, the state stopped accepting applications. … Thus we are prevented from submitting a request for funding a Gene Autry Trail bridge, which would also have an estimated cost of $250 million.”

What does that mean for these two vital arteries in and out of Palm Springs? “Given the costs of these two long bridges, we are unable to proceed unless we find alternative funding sources,” Fuller wrote.

Four years later … well, there are still no bridges on Gene Autry, Indian Canyon or Vista Chino over the wash—and there won’t be in the immediately foreseeable future.

As for the future beyond the immediately foreseeable? Well, that’ll be the topic of an Independent story coming soon. So stay tuned—and be patient on the clogged roadways, please.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Technical issues caused the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to close early on Sunday, and to be closed all day today (Monday). Watch the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Facebook page for information on tomorrow and beyond.

• Today, on Martin Luther King Day, the civil rights leader’s daughter had some things to say. Per The Associated Press: “America has honored Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday for nearly four decades yet still hasn’t fully embraced and acted on the lessons from the slain civil rights leader, his youngest daughter said Monday. The Rev. Bernice King, who leads The King Center in Atlanta, said leaders—especially politicians —too often cheapen her father’s legacy into a ‘comfortable and convenient King’ offering easy platitudes. … Her voice rising and falling in cadences similar to her father’s, Bernice King bemoaned institutional and individual racism, economic and health care inequities, police violence, a militarized international order, hardline immigration structures and the climate crisis. She said she’s ‘exhausted, exasperated and, frankly, disappointed’ to hear her father’s words about justice quoted so extensively alongside ‘so little progress’ addressing society’s gravest problems.”

• We’ve mentioned the bonkers-high cost of eggs in this space recently. Well, the prices of butter and margarine are now going crazy, too. According to CBS News: “As of December margarine prices were up a whopping 44% from a year ago, according to the Consumer Price Index, while butter prices jumped 31% during the same period. The average price of butter soared to $4.81 per pound in December, up from $3.47 a year prior, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Margarine producers blame the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine for disrupting production of their main ingredients, which are vegetable oils such as sunflower or soybean. Supply issues are also largely responsible for pushing up butter prices. Many dairy farmers significantly thinned their herds after struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic, said Peter Vitaliano, chief economist at the National Milk Producers Federation. That has reduced the amount of milk (available) for making butter.”

• The more sophisticated automobiles get, the more ways there are for bad actors to create chaos. The Hacker News reports: “Multiple bugs affecting millions of vehicles from 16 different manufacturers could be abused to unlock, start, and track cars, plus impact the privacy of car owners. The security vulnerabilities were found in the automotive APIs powering Acura, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Rolls Royce, Toyota as well as in software from Reviver, SiriusXM, and Spireon. The flaws run a wide gamut, ranging from those that give access to internal company systems and user information to weaknesses that would allow an attacker to remotely send commands to achieve code execution. … While all the security vulnerabilities have since been fixed by the respective manufacturers following responsible disclosure, the findings highlight the need for defense-in-depth strategy to contain threats and mitigate risk.”

• CNN looks at the stress long COVID is causing among children: “Jessica Rosario loved watching her 15-year-old, Eliana, play flute with the rest of the marching band during Open Door Christian School football games. But after the homecoming game in 2021, she got an alarming call from the Ohio school’s band director. Rosario’s daughter was on the floor of the band room, clutching her chest. … The freshman couldn’t speak or stand. When paramedics transported her to the ambulance, she was dead weight, her mom says. Eliana’s condition turned out to be an extreme form of long COVID. She’s one of potentially millions of US children who have symptoms long after their initial infection. Children – even healthy teens and the very young – can have long COVID, several studies have found, and it can follow an infection that’s severe or mild.”

• And finally … is it possible for humans to control lightning strikes using lasers? The answer is a definite maybe. The Guardian explains: “Scientists have steered lightning bolts with lasers for the first time in the field, according to a demonstration performed during heavy storms at the top of a Swiss mountain. The feat, which involved firing powerful laser pulses at thunderclouds over several months last year, paves the way for laser-based lightning protection systems at airports, launchpads and tall buildings. … Writing in the journal Nature Photonics, (Aurélien Houard, a physicist at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau) and colleagues in Switzerland describe how they carted a powerful laser to the top of the Säntis mountain in north-eastern Switzerland and parked it near a 124m-high telecoms tower that is struck by lightning about 100 times a year. The scientists waited for storms to gather and between July and September last year, fired rapid laser pulses at thunderclouds for a total of more than six hours. Instruments set up to record lightning strikes showed that the laser diverted the course of four upward lightning discharge over the course of the experiments.”

Support the Independent!

Quality local journalism takes time, dedication and a whole lot of money to produce. Please help us continue what we’re doing, if you have the financial means, by clicking the button below and becoming a Supporter of the Independent. Thanks, as always, for reading!

Read this Indy Digest at CVIndependent.com!