1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
California State Route 47
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State Route 47 is a state highway in the U. S. state of California, connecting Terminal Island to the mainland in the Los Angeles area. From its south end at I-110 in San Pedro, it heads east across the Vincent Thomas Bridge to the island and the end of state maintenance. The state highway again at the junction with I-710 on Terminal Island, crossing the Schuyler Heim Bridge north to the mainland and the second terminus. The entire route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System, after coming back to ground level on Terminal Island, SR47 becomes the locally maintained Seaside Avenue at the interchange with Ferry Street, where there was a toll plaza until 2000. The freeway ends just beyond at Navy Way, after which the road enters Long Beach and becomes Ocean Boulevard, however, SR47 must exit the freeway onto its frontage roads, intersecting Henry Ford Avenue before turning north onto the Terminal Island Freeway. Ocean Boulevard leads east over the Gerald Desmond Bridge and becomes Interstate 710, State maintenance begins again on the Terminal Island Freeway, which is also signed as State Route 103. After a partial interchange with New Dock Street, only allowing access to and from the north, SR47 crosses the Cerritos Channel on the Schuyler Heim Bridge, a lift bridge opened in 1948. Just beyond the bridge, SR47 leaves the freeway, which continues northeast as SR103, onto Henry Ford Avenue, the remainder of what is signed as SR47, along Henry Ford Avenue and Alameda Street to the Redondo Beach Freeway, is locally maintained. Henry Ford Avenue quickly crosses the Dominguez Channel and Anaheim Street, and merges with Alameda Street, all cross streets are thus grade-separated from the rail line while intersecting the streets at grade, except for Rosecrans Avenue, which bridges over all three. Crossings along this segment include the Century Freeway, Imperial Highway, Firestone Boulevard, after that portion was completed, an extension to Wilmington was opened on February 2,1924, resulting in a completely independent truck route to the port. The truck boulevard continued along the west side to Dominguez Street, there trucks could turn east and south to Terminal Island via Henry Ford Avenue, or continue southwest through Wilmington to San Pedro. The highway soon came to be known as Alameda Street all the way to Wilmington and it did not become a state highway, instead the state took over Figueroa Street to the west and Atlantic Avenue to the east. Plans for freeways in Los Angeles County evolved from a 1937 Automobile Club of Southern California plan, the former included a single freeway connecting Los Angeles to Long Beach, beginning at Pasadena and heading south-southwest to Lynwood, then paralleling Long Beach Boulevard to Long Beach. This second freeway came to be known as the Long Beach Parkway or Alamitos Parkway, construction began in early 1946, and the completed link was dedicated on January 10,1948, replacing the older Henry Ford Bridge. Initially known as the East By-Pass and West By-Pass, the later became part of the Harbor Parkway. The state legislature added the East By-Pass to the highway system in 1947 as Route 222. The Los Angeles City Planning Commission approved a master plan in mid-1955. The Industrial Freeway south of the Santa Monica Freeway became Route 270 in 1959, in the 1964 renumbering, the Industrial Freeway became Route 47, and the former East By-Pass became Route 241
3.
Port of Los Angeles
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The Port of Los Angeles, also called Americas Port, is a port complex that occupies 7,500 acres of land and water along 43 miles of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. The port is located in San Pedro Bay in the San Pedro and Wilmington neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a department of the City of Los Angeles, the Port of Los Angeles employs nearly 896,000 people throughout the LA County Region and 3.6 million worldwide. Around $1.2 billion worth of cargo comes in and out each day at the LA Port, the Ports Channel Depth is 53 feet. The port has 23 cargo terminals,270 deepwater berths,77 container cranes,9 container terminals, the LA Port imports furniture, footwear, electronics, automobile parts, and apparel. The Port exports wastepaper, cotton, resins, animal feed, the ports major trading partners are China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. S. In 1542, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo discovered the Bay of Smokes, the south-facing San Pedro Bay was originally a shallow mudflat, too soft to support a wharf. Visiting ships had two choices, stay far out at anchor and have their goods and passengers ferried to shore, or beach themselves. That sticky process is described in Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, phineas Banning greatly improved shipping when he dredged the channel to Wilmington in 1871 to a depth of 10 feet. The port handled 50,000 tons of shipping that year, after Bannings death in 1885, his sons pursued their interests in promoting the port, which handled 500,000 tons of shipping in that year. The Southern Pacific Railroad and Collis P. Huntington wanted to create Port Los Angeles at Santa Monica, however, the Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis and U. S. Senator Stephen White pushed for support of the Port of Los Angeles at San Pedro Bay. The Free Harbor Fight was settled when San Pedro was endorsed in 1897 by a commission headed by Rear Admiral John C, with U. S. government support, breakwater construction began in 1899, and the area was annexed to Los Angeles in 1909. The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners was founded in 1907, in 1912 the Southern Pacific Railroad completed its first major wharf at the port. During the 1920s, the port surpassed San Francisco as the West Coasts busiest seaport, in the early 1930s, a massive expansion of the port was undertaken with the construction of a breakwater three miles out and over two miles in length. In addition to the construction of this outer breakwater, a breakwater was built off Terminal Island with docks for seagoing ships. It was this improved harbor that hosted the events for the 1932 Summer Olympics. During World War II the port was used for shipbuilding, employing more than 90,000 people. In 1959, Matson Navigation Companys Hawaiian Merchant delivered 20 containers to the port, the opening of the Vincent Thomas Bridge in 1963 greatly improved access to Terminal Island and allowed increased traffic and further expansion of the port
4.
San Pedro, Los Angeles
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San Pedro is a community within the city of Los Angeles, California. Formerly a separate city, it consolidated with Los Angeles in 1909, the Port of Los Angeles, a major international seaport, is partially located within San Pedro. The district has grown from being dominated by the industry to become primarily a working class community within the city of Los Angeles. The site, at the end of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The peninsula, including all of San Pedro, was the homeland of the Tongva-Gabrieleño Native American people for thousands of years, in other areas of the Los Angeles Basin archeological sites date back 8, 000–15,000 years. The Tongva believe they have been here since the beginning of time, once called the lords of the ocean, due to their mastery of oceangoing canoes, many Tongva villages covered the coastline. Their first contact with Europeans in 1542 with João Cabrilho, the Portuguese explorer who also was the first to write of them, chowigna and Suangna were two Tongva settlements of many in the peninsula area, which was also a departure point for their rancherias on the Channel Islands. Legend has it that the Native Americans blessed the land of Palos Verdes, the Tongva called the San Pedro area Chaaw. San Pedro was named for St. Peter of Alexandria, a bishop in Alexandria. His feast day is November 24 on the ecclesiastical calendar of Spain. Santa Catalina Island, named after Catherine of Alexandria, was claimed for the Spanish Empire the next day, on her feast day, in 1602–1603, Sebastián Vizcaíno officially surveyed and mapped the California coastline, including San Pedro Bay, for New Spain. The anglicized pronunciation, popularized by the English-speaking people of Midwestern America, is san-PEE-dro, european settlement began in 1769 as part of an effort to populate California, although trade restrictions encouraged more smuggling than regular business. Rancho San Pedro is the site of the first Spanish land grant in Alta California, the land was granted in 1784 by King Carlos III to Juan Jose Dominguez, a retired Spanish soldier who came to California with the Gaspar de Portolà expedition. When New Spain won its independence from the Spanish Empire and Alta California became part of Mexico, the restrictions were lifted. In 1888, the War Department took control of a tract of land next to the bay and this became Fort MacArthur in 1914 and was a coastal defense site for many years. Woodrow Wilson transferred 200 United States Navy ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1919 when tension arose between the United States and Japan over the fate of China. San Diego Bay was considered too shallow for the largest ships, local availability of fuel oil minimized transportation costs, and consistently good weather allowed frequent gunnery exercises off the nearby Channel Islands of California. The heavy cruisers of the Scouting Force were transferred from the Atlantic to San Pedro in response to the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, by 1934,14 battleships, two aircraft carriers,14 cruisers, and 16 support ships were based at San Pedro
5.
Terminal Island
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Terminal Island is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhood of San Pedro in the city of Los Angeles, and the city of Long Beach. Terminal Island is roughly split between the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach, land use on the island is entirely industrial and port-related, as well as the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island. The island was originally called Isla Raza de Buena Gente and later Rattlesnake Island and it was renamed Terminal Island in 1891. The site chosen for the new plant was on a barren mudflat known as Rattlesnake Island, construction of Plant No.1 began in 1910. In 1930, the Ford Motor Company built a facility called Long Beach Assembly, the factory remained until 1958 when manufacturing operations were moved inland to Pico Rivera. In 1927, a facility, Allen Field, was established on Terminal Island. The Naval Reserve established a center at the field and later took complete control. In 1941 the Long Beach Naval Station became located adjacent to the airfield, in 1942 the Naval Reserve Training Facility was transferred, and a year later NAB San Pedros status was downgraded to a Naval Air Station. Reeves Field as a Naval Air Station was disestablished in 1947, a large industrial facility now covers the site of the former Naval Air Station. The island was home to about 3,500 first- and second-generation Japanese Americans prior to World War II in a known as East San Pedro or Fish Island. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, all of the adult Issei males on Terminal Island were incarcerated by the FBI on February 9,1942. Immediately after the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19,1942 and they were subsequently sent to internment camps, and the entire neighborhood was razed. The Japanese community on Terminal Island was the first to be evacuated and interned en masse, because of the relative geographical isolation of the island, the citizens developed their own culture and even their own dialect. After World War II, the Terminal Islanders settled elsewhere, in 1971, they formed the Terminal Islanders Club, which has organized various events for its members. In 2002, the surviving second-generation citizens set up a memorial on Terminal Island to honor their parents, during World War II, Terminal Island was an important center for defense industries, especially shipbuilding. It was also, therefore, one of the first places where African Americans tried to effect their integration into defense-related work on the West Coast. In 1946, Howard Hughes moved his monstrous Spruce Goose airplane from his plant in Culver City to Terminal Island in preparation for its test flight, in its first and only flight, it took off from the island on November 2,1947. Preservation of vacant buildings earned the island a spot on the top 11 sites on the National Trust for Historic Preservations 2012 Most Endangered Historic Places List, in mid-2013, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners approved a preservation plan
6.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
7.
California Department of Transportation
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The California Department of Transportation is an executive department within the U. S. state of California. Caltrans manages the highway system and is actively involved with public transportation systems throughout the state. It supports Amtrak California and the Capitol Corridor, the department is part of the state cabinet-level California State Transportation Agency. Like the majority of government agencies, Caltrans is headquartered in Sacramento. In 2015, Caltrans released a new statement, Provide a safe, sustainable, integrated and efficient transportation system to enhance California’s economy. The earliest predecessor of Caltrans was the Bureau of Highways, which was created by the California Legislature and this agency consisted of three commissioners who were charged with analyzing the state road system and making recommendations. At the time, there was no highway system, since roads were purely a local responsibility. After the commissioners submitted their report to the governor on November 25,1896, voters approved an $18 million bond issue for the construction of a state highway system in 1910, and the first Highway Commission was convened in 1911. On August 7,1912, the department broke ground on its first construction project, the year 1912 also saw the founding of the Transportation Laboratory and the creation of seven administrative divisions. In 1913, the legislature started requiring vehicle registration and allocated the funds to support regular highway maintenance. In 1921, the legislature turned the Department of Engineering into the Department of Public Works, the history of Caltrans and its predecessor agencies during the 20th century was marked by many firsts. In late 1972, the legislature approved a reorganization in which the Department of Public Works was merged with the Department of Aeronautics to become the modern Department of Transportation, for administrative purposes, Caltrans divides the State of California into 12 districts, supervised by district offices. Most districts cover multiple counties, District 12 is the district with one county. The largest districts by population are District 4 and District 7, like most state agencies, Caltrans maintains its headquarters in Sacramento, which is covered by District 3. Official California Department of Transportation website Named Highways, Freeways, Structures, and Other Appurtenances in California
8.
Suspension bridge
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A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of type of bridge were built in the early 19th century. Simple suspension bridges, which lack vertical suspenders, have a history in many mountainous parts of the world. This type of bridge has cables suspended between towers, plus vertical suspender cables carry the weight of the deck below, upon which traffic crosses. This arrangement allows the deck to be level or to arc upward for additional clearance, like other suspension bridge types, this type often is constructed without falsework. The suspension cables must be anchored at each end of the bridge, the main cables continue beyond the pillars to deck-level supports, and further continue to connections with anchors in the ground. The roadway is supported by vertical suspender cables or rods, called hangers, in the latter case there will be very little arc in the outboard main cables. The earliest suspension bridges were ropes slung across a chasm, with a deck possibly at the level or hung below the ropes such that the rope had a catenary shape. The Tibetan saint and bridge-builder Thangtong Gyalpo originated the use of chains in his version of simple suspension bridges. In 1433, Gyalpo built eight bridges in eastern Bhutan, the last surviving chain-linked bridge of Gyalpos was the Thangtong Gyalpo Bridge in Duksum en route to Trashi Yangtse, which was finally washed away in 2004. Gyalpos iron chain bridges did not include a deck bridge which is the standard on all modern suspension bridges today. Instead, both the railing and the layer of Gyalpos bridges used wires. The stress points that carried the screed were reinforced by the iron chains, before the use of iron chains it is thought that Gyalpo used ropes from twisted willows or yak skins. He may have also used tightly bound cloth, the first American iron chain suspension bridge was the Jacobs Creek Bridge in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, designed by inventor James Finley. Finleys bridge was the first to all of the necessary components of a modern suspension bridge. Finley patented his design in 1808, and published it in the Philadelphia journal, The Port Folio, in 1810. Early British chain bridges included the Dryburgh Abbey Bridge and 137 m Union Bridge, with rapidly increasing to 176 m with the Menai Bridge. The first chain bridge on the European continent was the Chain Bridge in Nuremberg, the Clifton Suspension Bridge is one of the longest of the parabolic arc chain type
9.
Annual average daily traffic
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Annual average daily traffic, abbreviated AADT, is a measure used primarily in transportation planning and transportation engineering. Traditionally, it is the volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a year divided by 365 days. AADT is a useful and simple measurement of how busy the road is, newer advances from traffic data providers are now providing AADT by side of the road, by day of week and by time of day. One of the most important uses of AADT is for determining funding for the maintenance, in the United States the amount of federal funding a state will receive is related to the total traffic measured across its Highway network. Each year on June 15, every state in the United States submits a Highway Performance Monitoring System HPMS report, the HPMS report contains various information regarding the road segments in the state based on a sample of the road segments. In the report, the AADT is converted to Vehicle Miles Traveled, VMT is the AADT multiplied by the length of the road segment. To determine the amount of traffic a state has, the AADT cannot be summed for all road segments since an AADT is a rate, the VMT is summed and is used as an indicator of the amount of traffic a state has. For federal-funding, formulas are applied to include the VMT and other highway statistics, to measure AADT on individual road segments, traffic data is collected either by an automated traffic counter or hiring an observer to record traffic. There are two different techniques of measuring the AADTs for road segments, one technique is called continuous count data collection method. This is where sensors are embedded into a road and traffic data is measured all 365 days. The AADT would be the sum of the traffic for the entire year divided by 365 days. There is a problem calculating the AADT with this method. The continuous count equipment is not operating for the full 365 days due to being shut down for maintenance or repair, because of this, seasonal or day-of-week biases might skew the calculated AADT. In 1992, AASHTO released the AASHTO Guidelines for Traffic Data Programs, for every month and day-of-week, a Monthly Average Day of Week is calculated. Each day-of-weeks MADW is then calculated across months to calculate an Annual Average Day of Week, finally, the AADWs are averaged to calculate an AADT. The United States Federal Highway Administration has adopted this method as the method in the. While providing the most accurate AADT, installing and maintaining continuous count stations method is costly, most agencies are only able to monitor a very small percentage of the roadway using this method. Most AADTs are generated using data collection methods sometimes known as the coverage count data collection method
SR 47
