Lake Otis and Tudor vs. The Clouds

I walked over to Lake Otis and Tudor to get some pictures of what the intersections looks like as the State tries to take it off the top of the traffic jam list in Anchorage.  [OK, those of you who live in LA or Chicago or New York would laugh at what we call a traffic jam.  It's all relative.]  My aim was to go up on the St. Mary's hill and take some pictures from above.  You can  click here for earlier post of a public meeting showing what they were planning back in April.   But I really wanted to see the 16 bull-noses and 2 pork-chops they said they were installing a weekend ago. 

Well, already as we walked south on Lake Otis toward Tudor, I could see that the clouds were much more photogenic than the street. 





I'm guessing these orange things are the bull-noses, and I'm delighted that these appear to be temporary. 

We crossed over Tudor and walked south to the church driveway.  It looks to me that the sidewalk/bikepath area here is going to be wider than it was, but I'm not really sure.


It seems that going into the intersection from all directions, things will widen into a right lane, two left lanes, and two through lanes.  Coming out of the intersection in all directions there are just two through lanes.  It's not completely clear, because right now they have the lanes limited.  In the next picture, you can see that approaching the corner from the south, there is only one through lane. 

There were two cops and a smattering of cars in the parking lot.  I walked over to the end of the parking lot and into the wooded area leading to the corner.  But they had a chain link fence that meant my great picture wasn't going to happen.  There were too many trees and bushes between the fence and the ledge to get any great pictures.  This was the best one.  (It's looking to Lake Otis on the north side of intersection.)

Here's a street level view from the SW corner.  Each corner has a little pedestrian island (I'm pretty sure this is a pork-chop) like this.  It appears the cars will be clear in the right lanes to just turn right.  I'm guessing pedestrians and bicycles will be able to push a button to make them stop. 








But once we crossed Tudor to go back home, I gave up completely on the construction and succumbed to what was happening overhead.

9:33pm

9:34pm

9:36pm

Does anyone else see what I see in this last cloud?

It was only this morning that I decided I wouldn't abandon the corner altogether and kept a couple of those pictures in this post.