What was CalTrans thinking?
The traffic engineers went to sleep when CalTrans built the approach from Highway 168 heading west to the transition to the Highway 180 Gap as you head toward downtown Fresno. Vehicles come from all directions into the transition area and it seems there always are motorists on the side of the road because of collisions.
I drive this stretch everyday and it's difficult to avoid all the vehicles merging -- even if you drive carefully and slowly. Most motorists don't. What a mess.
At the very least, the California Highway Patrol should be ticketing that area. That would help make the stretch safer. But the CHP officers ignore the area. Maybe they think it's too unsafe to ticket people.
This is an old problem. CalTrans takes care of Los Angeles and San Francisco freeways and then slaps together freeways in the San Joaquin Valley. There's a long history of CalTrans misdesigning local freeways. The Freeway 41 offramp at Friant Road is another example. That had to be fixed because CalTrans couldn't figure out that there would be a lot of traffic going to RiverPark, and other north Fresno venues.
Then there's the Freeway 168 westbound offramp at McKinley -- another monument to CalTrans' design incompetence.
I could go on, but you get the point.