Hi Chris. California State Route 24 is a heavily traveled east-west freeway in the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California between Oakland (junction Interstate 580, the MacArthur Freeway) and Walnut Creek (junction Interstate 680). It lies only in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and it is highly urban. It is a relatively old freeway, existing since at least the 1960s.

It was originally projected to lead to a never-built "Southern Crossing" of the San Francisco Bay to the south side of San Francisco. For years it largely fed the MacArthur Freeway into the Transbay Bridge toward San Francisco. It was built to the Nimitz Freeway (now Interstate 880); the north-south segment of Route 24 has since been re-numbered as Interstate 980 into which the east-west segment feeds.

Route 24 rises from near sea level in downtown Oakland past its interchange with California State Highway 13 to cross the county line through the dual Caldecott Tunnel and offers some attractive views of the mountainous terrain through which it passes. Due to the traffic jams, commuters get extended views of the scenery.

As highways go it isn’t very long. I would say it is about 9 or 10 miles long, but does offer some pretty views of which Mount Diablo is one. By the way. Mount Diablo is the fastest growing mountain in the Bay Area. It is uplifting at the rate of about 2mm per year. It is sort of caught in a squeeze play between the faults to the east of it and the faults to the west of it.

The principle faults in the area are the Hayward, Mt Diablo and the Calaveras faults. There are a couple more, but they are unnamed. Both the Hayward and the Calaveras faults are capable of having a quake up to about M=7.5. The Mt Diablo fault might be able to get to M=7.0. The Diablo fault would be the fault that I would be concerned with the most as it is a thrust fault. The Mt Diablo fault gets its name from Mount Diablo as it runs under the mountain, which is the result of the squeeze play. Take Care…Don in creepy town