Three Highways, One City: A Driver's Guide to SR-99, SR-58 and SR-178 in Bakersfield

Bakersfield is a junction city, and its traffic story is the story of three highways meeting. State Route 99 runs north-south through the city's west side, the valley's main street for freight and commuters alike. SR-58 crosses east-west, climbing from Bakersfield over Tehachapi Pass toward Mojave and Barstow, one of California's great truck routes. SR-178 runs from downtown northeast up the Kern River canyon toward Lake Isabella. Together they make Bakersfield a place California drives through, and a place that has to drive with California.

Each corridor does different work. SR-99 carries the daily commute between Bakersfield's neighborhoods, Rosedale, Oildale, the southwest, and the valley cities beyond. SR-58's Bakersfield segment doubles as both a cross-town freeway and the start of the Tehachapi climb, so local traffic mixes with long-haul trucks beginning a mountain grade. SR-178 divides into two personalities: an urban freeway across the city's northeast, then a winding canyon highway where drivers slow for the river road's curves.

November stresses all three. Tule fog settles on the valley-floor stretches of SR-99 and SR-58 in the early mornings. Harvest traffic, orchard equipment and produce trucks, remains part of the mix on the surface roads that feed the interchanges. Holiday travel builds steadily through the month, and Meadows Field Airport trips add their own runs up Airport Drive toward SR-99. The west Bakersfield interchange country, where the city's freeways braid together, rewards patience at the peaks.

The practical counsel is seasonal rather than dramatic. In fog, slow down and let the trucks set a conservative pace. On SR-178's canyon section, treat the drive as a mountain road, because it is one. For cross-town trips, remember that Bakersfield's freeway system, unlike many California cities, still moves well outside the peak, so shifting a trip by an hour often buys a clear run on all three corridors.

Junction cities live by their junctions. Bakersfield's three highways connect it to the coast ranges, the Sierra and the whole length of the valley, and a little November care keeps the junction, and the city, moving.