Road trip to the Oregon Coast via U.S. 20

Last Saturday, some friends and I drove to Newport, OR, which is on the scenic Oregon Coast. We departed from Eugene, so we drove north on I-5, west on OR 34, and then continued west on U.S. 20 when we reached Corvallis. The first minor bit of road related news was the U.S. 20 being signed as OR 20 on the western end of Philomath.

The other, much bigger news was that we discovered that ODOT is straightening out U.S. 20 from Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville. This is no small project, the initial price tag was to be $130 million, but after a discovery of ancient landslides, this amount is expected to increase about $40 million. When the project is completed, an 11 mile windy stretch of road will be replaced by a much straighter 7 mile road, 2/3 of which will have passing lanes. Inside Lincoln County did a 6 minute video about where the project is currently:

The final result of this project should be a win for everybody. It will be easier to ship goods to and from the central coast of Oregon, and it will also be faster for tourists as well. ODOT's site on the project is quite visually appealing, and they even have a Flickr account specifically for it. They have many pictures that most people couldn't take since the majority of the project is only accessible to construction crew members and ODOT personnel. I have included below one of the pictures that I took.