West of Effingham, Illinois, US 40 makes a wide curve and passes over a railroad track. An earlier alignment of the road was left behind when the overpass was built.
Here’s what all of this looks like from the air.
Imagery and map data © 2014 Google.
Humorously, on the ground this alignment looks like this. I can hear the chatter at the highway maintenance garage now: “I know! Let’s get drunk and go stripe some road!”
There are a couple houses on this little stretch of road. I wonder what the owners think of the hilarity at the end of their front yards.
It’s a time-honored tradition in road realigning to just bury an old alignment under a mound of dirt to build the new alignment.
All of these photos are from two visits I made here in 2007.
If I’m stating the obvious here, I apologize in advance. :) My guess is they’re using that stretch to train the stripers. :) Beautiful shots, though. A strange kind of zeitgeist.
Oh, sure. All I can say is that the OCD runs strong in me, and I would have to move if they did this in front of my house.
We used to see something like this when I lived in New York State–paint stripe test–but they also used to label it with a sign.
No need for a sign when you practice on a little road stub like this one! Only the one family that lives on it, and roadgeeks like me, ever go back there.
Yup, it’s undoubtedly a testing/practice road but I sure did enjoy the laugh!
Like I said, I hope the road dept. never does this on any road I live on!
That’s funny. I hope no one is drunk and try to stay between the lines.
Isn’t this how a drunk driver sees the road ahead anyway? :-)
You can’t mix up the mustard and mayo, you have to stay between them :D