Just two extra years and $19 million dollars over budget, the Devil’s Slide tunnels south of San Francisco are nearing completion. While the descriptions vary from “sleek” and “European”, to “claustrophobic” and “terrifying”, only time will tell the longevity of the precarious new roadway.
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Devil’s Slide Tunnel © jitze
After a contentious vote seven years ago to provide an alternative route through southern California’s “Devil’s Slide”, the two new 1-mile long tunnels are the first to be built in the state in nearly 50 years. The stretch of road along the coast has had its share of troubles, repeatedly falling apart and into the crashing Pacific below.
The tunnels burrowed to avoid this course are designed with an Austrian technique and outfitted with exhaust fans and fire proof shelters at intervals along the way. Motorists in the area are a bit apprehensive at the thought of being in a line of cars moving in a tunnel through the rocky hillside with the San Andreas fault line so close beneath them … and who can blame them?