| I-80 | |||
| Get started | San Francisco | ||
| End | Farad | ||
| Length | 199 mi | ||
| Length | 321 km | ||
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According to ablogtophone, Interstate 80 or I -80 is an Interstate Highway in the U.S. state of California. The highway connects San Francisco to the state capital Sacramento and on towards Nevada. The highway begins in San Francisco, goes to Oakland via the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. After this, I-80 runs north through the many suburbs. After the Carquinez Bridgethe road turns east again and continues through the Sacramento Valley. The road goes through the Californian capital Sacramento. After Sacramento, the road heads into the Sierra Nevada and passes just north of Lake Tahoe, a major tourist destination. Shortly thereafter, I-80 crosses the Nevada border at the town of Truckee, just west of the city of Reno. The highway is 321 kilometers long.
Travel directions
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
I-80 at Berkeley.
Bay Area
According to beautyphoon, Interstate 80 begins in San Francisco, a major city in the Bay Area. According to the signage, the highway begins at the interchange with US 101 and continues on the James Lick Skyway, an elevated highway above ground level. There are also partly 2 layers on top of each other, with a city road underneath. Officially, however, I-80 begins at the south end of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, at the former Embarcadero Freeway. The first few kilometers are therefore not officially an Interstate Highway.
The slope to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge already starts in San Francisco, because this city is located directly on the water. The highway already runs high above San Francisco’s road network. The western part of the Bay Bridge is a double-deck suspension bridge, the eastern part a cable- stayed bridge, with 5 lanes of traffic in each direction. After 14 kilometers you arrive in the city of Oakland.
On the mainland, I-80 curves north and Interstate 880 merges with I-80 here. The highway widens here to 6 lanes in each direction. This section of I-80 is known as the Eastshore Freeway, signifying the east shore of San Francisco Bay. The highway runs through Berkeley, mainly through industrial areas. At the suburb of Albany, Interstate 580 turns off towards San Rafael, via a toll bridge to the other side of San Pablo Bay, a tributary of the larger San Francisco Bay.
One now passes for 25 kilometers through an endless row of small suburbs. Here I-80 continues a little further inland. The largest suburb on this part of I-80 is Richmond. Near Tara Hills you pass a huge shopping mall. About 40 kilometers after San Francisco one passes the Carquinez Bridge, a toll bridge over the Carquinez Strait. Tolls are only charged toward Sacramento. Suburbia continues on the north side, with the suburb of Vallejo. After this city, I-80 heads northeast and the cities are no longer adjacent to each other, but are separated by undeveloped agricultural land.
Sacramento Valley
Interstate 680 branches off at Suison City, which forms a bypass to San Jose, the largest city in the Bay Area metropolitan area. Not far after this, the next larger city appears again, namely Fairfield, located halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Barely 10 kilometers away is another larger town, Vacaville. This is where Interstate 505 begins, which leads to I-5 to Northern California.
The landscape changes dramatically here, from the barren desert-like hills to a flat irrigated agricultural landscape with many green fields. I-80 runs straight to the northeast here. At the town of Davis, State Route 113 exits, a regional highway to Woodland and Interstate 5 to northern California.
Soon after you arrive in Sacramento, the capital of California. The city is located on the Sacramento River, with an agglomeration of 2.4 million inhabitants and extends mainly east to the Sierra Nevada. This is where Business Route turns off I-80, a branch of Interstate 80 that runs through downtown Sacramento. Interstate 80 itself runs through the northern suburbs of the city. I-80 runs past the California Highway Patrol Academy, a major California highway patrol training center.
On the north side of town, I-80 intersects Interstate 5, the Golden State Freeway, as well as the state’s major north-south axis. At McClellan Air Force Base, Business Route I-80 reconnects with the main route of I-80. From here begins the drive through the sprawling Sacramento suburbs. After more than 25 kilometers you leave the agglomeration and I-80 runs into the Sierra Nevada.
Sierra Nevada
The I-80 at Donner Summit, at 2206 meters.
The highway starts here on the long ascent towards the Nevada border. You pass some more distant suburbs of Sacramento, but soon I-80 runs through wooded area. The highway quickly rises to more than 1000 meters altitude and snow falls here regularly from autumn to spring. Blizzards also occur in this area, which is known for its extreme snowfall. Sierra Nevada also means “snow mountains”. During snowfall, checkpoints are set up to stop traffic that does not have snow chains. Occasionally, the highway is even completely closed to all traffic.
The Emigrant Gap is a steep descent of tens of miles from Nevada into the Sacramento Valley. The highway still rises eastwards, ski areas are right along the highway. The highest point is reached at Donner Pass, at 2206 meters. The pass height is normally open all year round, except during snow storms. A little further you pass Truckee, the last place before the border. with Nevada The highway here runs about 15 kilometers north of the large Lake Tahoe. The highway doesn’t descend here as fast as it ascended from Sacramento. Moments later, you reach the Nevada border and Interstate 80 continues in Nevada to Reno.
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
Western Span Bay Bridge with San Francisco in the background.
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, commonly known as the Bay Bridge, is a toll bridge of I-80. The bridge spans the San Francisco Bay and connects the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. It is one of the busiest bridges in the United States with 280,000 vehicles daily.
The bridge opened to traffic on November 12, 1936, six months before the opening of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The complex consists of two bridges, connected by a tunnel through the island of Yerba Buena. The western portion to San Francisco consists of two double-deck suspension bridges. The eastern section to Oakland consists of a cable- stayed bridge and a series of long bridge bridges.
The bridge has 2×5 lanes, of which the suspension bridge has 5 lanes on the upper deck towards San Francisco and 5 lanes on the lower deck towards Oakland. The longest clear span is 704 meters. The eastern cable-stayed bridge is wider, here the 2×5 lanes are next to each other. The total length of the river crossing is 14 kilometres. The western bridge deck is 67 meters above the water, the eastern bridge deck is 58 meters above the water.
Tolls are only levied towards the west.
History
The first thoroughfare to the San Francisco region was the Lincoln Highway, a historic auto trail from New York to San Francisco, named after its terminus Lincoln Park in San Francisco.
From the era of the US Highways in 1926, US 40 was the through route in this corridor, but because there was no bridge over San Francisco Bay, US 40 ended in Oakland. With the opening of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936, US 40 was extended into San Francisco. I-80 later replaced US 40 along the entire corridor, but the number was retired with the major renumbering of California’s highways in 1964.
Bay Area
The first section that would later become part of Interstate 80 was the first Carquinez Straits Bridge at Vallejo, which opened on May 21, 1927. This was a one-lane bridge in each direction. The first section of highway opened in San Francisco in 1935. On November 12, 1936, the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, the largest work of art, was openedon the route of I-80. Some parts in Emeryville and Berkely also opened around 1936. The remainder of the suburban route in Alameda County and Contra Costa County was primarily opened between 1954 and 1958. In 1958, the second Carquinez Strait Bridge at Vallejo also opened, turning it into a highway. On November 11, 2003, the old bridge from 1927 was replaced by a new one. In 1960, the last link in Richmond opened to traffic, allowing the highway to continue from San Francisco to Vallejo.
| From | Unpleasant | Length | Date |
| Exit 1 | Exit 2 | 2 km | 00-00-1935 |
| Exit 2 | exit 8 | 10 km | 12-11-1936 |
| exit 8 | Exit 9 | 1 km | 00-00-1936 |
| Exit 14 | Exit 15 | 2 km | 00-00-1936 |
| Exit 10 | exit 12 | 3 km | 00-00-1939 |
| Exit 9 | Exit 10 | 1 km | 00-00-1954 |
| exit 12 | Exit 14 | 3 km | 00-00-1955 |
| Exit 15B | Exit 16 | 2 km | 00-00-1956 |
| Exit 16 | Exit 19 | 5 km | 00-00-1956 |
| Exit 19 | Exit 23 | 6 km | 00-00-1957 |
| Exit 23 | Exit 29 | 10 km | 00-00-1958 |
| Exit 15 | Exit 15B | 1 km | 00-00-1960 |
San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge
The starting point of I-80 at US 101 in San Francisco.
The new eastern span of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge.
The largest project in the San Francisco area in recent years was the replacement of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with a new earthquake-resistant bridge. The eastern span had partially collapsed after the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989. The new span consists of a so-called skyway, and a SAS span, a Self-Anchored Suspension-Span. This pylon is 159 meters high. The new span has 2×5 lanes of traffic, the same as the old span, but there are emergency lanes and a bike/footpath to Yerba Buena Island. The project cost $6.5 billion and lasted 11 years, from 2002 to September 2013. The new bridge opened on September 3, 2013, after which the old bridge was demolished.
Vallejo – Sacramento
The part further from Vallejo to Sacramento is fragmented. Some works of art over which the highway was built later date from the 1940s. These were often widened in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the highway was opened between 1958 and 1966, with the exception of a small section in Davis that was not completed until 1974.
| From | Unpleasant | Length | Date |
| Exit 67 | exit 70 | 5 km | 00-00-1941 |
| exit 63 | Exit 67 | 6 km | 00-00-1946 |
| Exit 78 | Exit 82 | 6 km | 00-00-1951 |
| Exit 29 | exit 33 | 6 km | 00-00-1958 |
| Exit 72 | Exit 75 | 5 km | 00-00-1960 |
| exit 39 | exit 43 | 6 km | 00-00-1961 |
| exit 33 | exit 36 | 5 km | 00-00-1963 |
| exit 43 | exit 48 | 8 km | 00-00-1963 |
| Exit 75 | Exit 78 | 5 km | 00-00-1963 |
| Exit 51 | exit 63 | 19 km | 27-10-1964 |
| exit 48 | Exit 51 | 5 km | 24-05-1966 |
| exit 36 | exit 39 | 5 km | 02-04-1970 |
| exit 70 | Exit 72 | 3 km | 10-10-1974 |
sacramento
The section northeast of Sacramento is the oldest, the first section opened as early as 1946, which was widened to modern highway standard in the 1970s. The section closer to downtown was opened in 1954 and 1955, but the downtown bypass was not opened to traffic until 1970 and 1971, eliminating through traffic through the busy downtown Sacramento.
One project was to create 10 miles of HOV /bus lanes in the median strip of I-80 in Sacramento, in both directions. There was a space reservation in the central reservation for this. The project was completed between August 2011 and December 2016 and cost $133 million.
| From | Unpleasant | Length | Date |
| Exit 105 | Exit 116 | 18 km | 00-00-1946 |
| Exit 103 | Exit 105 | 3 km | 00-00-1954 |
| Exit 95 | Exit 103 | 13 km | 00-00-1955 |
| Exit 82 | Exit 83 | 2 km | 11-06-1970 |
| Exit 86 | Exit 91 | 8 km | 14-08-1970 |
| Exit 91 | Exit 95 | 6 km | 21-01-1971 |
| Exit 83 | Exit 86 | 5 km | 14-10-1971 |
Business Route 80
| From | Unpleasant | Length | Date |
| 7B E Street | 15 | 13 km | 00-00-1954 |
| 1 Harbor Boulevard | 4A | 5 km | 00-00-1966 |
| 7 | 7B E Street | 2 km | 00-00-1966 |
| 1A | 1 Harbor Boulevard | 1 km | 00-00-1969 |
| 4A | 7 | 5 km | 00-00-1967 |
Sacramento-Nevada state line
I-80 on the border of Nevada and California.
Most of the section through the Sierra Nevada was opened around 1959, with the exception of the section around Auburn, just outside the Sacramento region, which was completed in 1973 and 1974. This was also the very last section of I-80 to be open throughout California.
Between 1998 and 2013, the entirety of I-80 through the Sierra Nevada was renovated, from Auburn to the Nevada border. The 15-year project cost $820 million and involved renovations of 680 kilometers of lane. The project was completed on October 15, 2013.
| From | Unpleasant | Length | Date |
| Exit 125 | Exit 143 | 29 km | 00-00-1958 |
| Exit 201 | Exit 207 | 10 km | 00-00-1958 |
| Exit 143 | Exit 152 | 14 km | 00-00-1959 |
| Exit 155 | Exit 161 | 10 km | 00-00-1959 |
| Exit 165 | Exit 174 | 14 km | 00-00-1959 |
| exit 180 | Exit 201 | 34 km | 00-00-1959 |
| Exit 152 | Exit 155 | 5 km | 00-00-1961 |
| Exit 161 | Exit 165 | 6 km | 02-10-1964 |
| Exit 174 | exit 180 | 10 km | 07-10-1964 |
| Exit 116 | Exit 124 | 13 km | 20-10-1973 |
| Exit 124 | Exit 125 | 2 km | 21-05-1974 |
Traffic intensities
The I-80/I-580 fork at Albany.
| Exit | Place | 2007 | 2014 | 2016 |
| Exit 1 | San Francisco | 165,000 | 167,000 | 172,000 |
| Exit 4 | Bay Bridge | 254,000 | 253,000 | 265,000 |
| exit 8 | Oakland ( I-580 ) | 203,000 | 147,000 | 150,000 |
| Exit 9 | Emeryville | 294,000 | 277,000 | 275,000 |
| exit 13 | Richmond ( I-580 ) | 277,000 | 203,000 | 180,000 |
| Exit 23 | Hercules ( SR-4 ) | 198,000 | 174,000 | 173,000 |
| Exit 27 | Carquinez Bridge | 124,000 | 113,000 | 118,000 |
| exit 43 | Fairfield | 213,000 | 209,000 | 235,000 |
| Exit 66 | Davis ( SR-113 ) | 106,000 | 124,000 | 133,000 |
| Exit 82 | Sacramento ( U.S. 50 ) | 149,000 | 153,000 | 155,000 |
| Exit 86 | Sacramento ( I-5 ) | 89,000 | 84,000 | 90,000 |
| Exit 96 | sacramento | 232,000 | 195,000 | 221,000 |
| Exit 121 | auburn | 85,000 | 85,000 | 88,000 |
| Exit 201 | border with Nevada | 28,000 | 25,000 | 31,000 |
