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Southern California freeways
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The freeways of Southern California, along with beaches, palm trees, and movie studios, are one of the major trademarks of this region. Perhaps no other urban areas in the world have embraced the automobile as passionately as have Greater Los Angeles (including Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties and the "Inland Empire") and San Diego. Extensive and complex freeway networks criss-cross the still fast-growing region, connecting urban centers with their suburbs and exurbs, as well as the areas of urban sprawl between them.
Despite the large number of freeways in Greater Los Angeles, the area actually has fewer lane-miles per capita than most larger metropolitan areas in the United States, ranking 31st of the top 39. As of 1999, Greater L.A. had 0.419 lane-miles per 1,000 people, only slightly more than Greater New York City and fewer than Greater Boston, the Washington Metropolitan Area and the San Francisco Bay Area. (American metros average .613 lane-miles per thousand) San Diego ranked 17th in the same study, with 0.659 lane-miles per thousand, and the Inland Empire ranked 21st, with 0.626.
A note on freeway namesAs in many American cities, Southern California freeways have names that are often distinct from the state or federal highway number that they are assigned. Southern California residents idiomatically refer to freeways with the definite article, as "the [freeway number]" (e.g., the Santa Monica and San Bernardino freeways are known as "the 10" (or in recent years the I-10), as they are segments of Interstate 10), but traffic reporters, highway signs, and transportation planners usually refer to a freeway by its full, descriptive name. Many overhead freeway signs installed at interchanges since the 1990s, however, have stopped displaying the freeway name, instead displaying the highway number, direction, and control city. The above example illustrates that a numbered route might have two or more names, each describing a different part of the freeway. Conversely, a named freeway might include portions of two or more differently numbered routes; for example, the Ventura Freeway consists of portions of U.S. Route 101 and State Route 134.
HistoryOriginsSouthern California's romance with the automobile owes in large part to resentment of the Southern Pacific Railroad's tight control over the region's commerce in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During his successful campaign for governor in 1910, anti-Southern Pacific candidate Hiram Johnson traveled the state by car (no small feat at that time). In the minds of Southlanders, this associated the automobile with clean, progressive government, in stark contrast to the railroads' control over the corrupt governments of the Midwest and Northeast. While the Southern Pacific-owned Pacific Electric Railway's famous "Red Car" streetcar lines were the axes of urbanization in Los Angeles during its period of spectacular growth in the 1910s and 1920s, they were unprofitable and increasingly unattractive compared to automobiles. As cars became cheaper and began to fill the region's roads in the 1920s, the Pacific Electric both lost ridership and slowed to a crawl; traffic congestion soon threatened to choke off the region's development altogether. At the same time, a number of influential urban planners were advocating the construction of a network of what one widely-read book dubbed "Magic Motorways", as the backbone of suburban development. These "greenbelt" advocates called for decentralized, automobile-oriented development as a means of remedying both urban overcrowding and declining rates of home ownership.
Planning and constructionDuring World War II, transportation bottlenecks on Southern California roads and railways convinced many that if Southern California were to accommodate a large population, it needed a completely new transportation system. The city of Los Angeles favored an upgraded rail transit system focused on its central city. However, the success of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, built between Los Angeles and Pasadena in 1940, convinced many that a freeway system could solve the region's transportation problems. Leaders of surrounding cities, such as Whittier, South Gate, Long Beach, and Pasadena, accordingly called for a web of freeways to connect the whole region, rather than funneling their residents out of their own downtowns and into that of Los Angeles. Pro-freeway sentiments prevailed, and by 1947 a comprehensive freeway plan for Los Angeles had been drawn up by the California Department of Public Works (now "Caltrans"). San Diego soon followed suit, and by the early 1950s construction had begun on much of the region's freeway system.
DiscontentBy the 1970s, Caltrans had abandoned many planned freeways in the face of significant political opposition. Growing enthusiasm for mass transit siphoned tax dollars away from freeway construction, and the California tax revolt of that same decade significantly reduced the resources available for infrastructure development. By 2004, only 61% of the freeway miles proposed in the 1954 master plan had been built. While many of these routes were geographically improbable (e.g. the Angeles Crest and Decker Freeways), some would have been quite useful. Combined with Caltrans' failure to complete routes such as the Long Beach and Glendale Freeways, the abandonment of routes such as the Laurel Canyon and Beverly Hills Freeways resulted in gaps and bottlenecks in the freeway system that caused ripple effects of congestion throughout the entire network. In response to the drying-up of funds from state government that followed in the wake of Proposition 13, Orange County--perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the freeway system--embarked on its own program of tollway construction in the 1980s using local funds, and began to apply local financing to freeway construction as well after the turn of the 21st century. The Century Freeway, belatedly opened in 1993 after bruising fights over its construction, is generally thought to be the last new freeway built with traditional funding methods.
Unlike Los Angeles, San Diego County is nearing completion of the originally planned freeway system. In San Diego, regional sales tax money helped pay for various extensions, with new toll roads like State Route 125 to fill in the remaining gaps. (bad link) The only major freeway not built was State Route 252 through Barrio Logan.
The futureAfter a deep recession in the early 1990s caused by the collapse of the defense industry at the end of the Cold War, Southern California began to grow again in the latter part of the decade. As in the region's population surge in the 1920s and 1930s, most of the new arrivals were impoverished illegal aliens from Mexico, and as in that period of growth, the region's infrastructure has had difficulty in keeping up. Traffic congestion that was already the nation's worst in the late 1980s got steadily worse throughout the 1990s, and by 2000 many routes (primarily freeways going through narrow mountain passes, such as the San Diego Freeway between the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Basin) were clogged further. However, even in the face of the state budget crisis of the early 2000s, plans have been drawn up to radically expand the region's transportation network to accommodate population growth that has already swelled the region's population to 17 million (as of the U.S. Census of 2000) and may see it grow to 25 or even 30 million in the coming decades. Environmentalist sentiments, high fuel prices, and the dearth of available land within a short drive of the region's urban centers will likely result in future development taking a pattern along the mass transit-oriented lines of the "smart growth" school's recommendations. It is clear, though, that freeways will continue to play an important role in Southern California's transportation throughout the 21st century.
Proposed/future freewaysDespite the previously-mentioned impediments to freeway construction, and the pressing need to rebuild many freeways designed for far lower volumes of traffic than their current usage, Caltrans' portfolio of new freeway projects remains sizable. Notable projects (some of which may never come to pass) include:
- Extension of the Interstate 710 Long Beach Freeway, to its originally planned terminus at Interstate 210 Foothill Freeway in Pasadena, via a tunnel underneath the city of South Pasadena
- Extension of the SR 2 Glendale Freeway through Silver Lake/Echo Park to meet the US 101 Hollywood Freeway.
- Upgrade of State Route 15 (SR 15) south of I-8 to Interstate 15 (I-15), "Escondido Freeway", to Interstate 5 (I-5), near downtown San Diego
- Conversion of SR 99 into Interstate 9
- Addition of high occupancy vehicle and high occupancy toll lanes to freeway segments currently lacking them
- Construction of lower-inclined alternate alignments on steep segments of freeway, to enable trucks to climb mountain passes more easily and speed up the flow of automobile traffic
- Construction of an additional freeway across the Santa Ana Mountains, to relieve congestion on the State Route 91 "Riverside Freeway" and provide a route between the Inland Empire and southern Orange County
- Extension of State Route 241 to meet the Interstate 5 in San Clemente
- Extension of State Route 57(Orange Freeway) to State Route 1 in Huntington Beach
- Extend State Route 905/future Interstate 905 to the Otay Mesa border crossing, with a junction at State Route 125 and future State Route 11
- A new freeway, considered as an alternative to State Route 91 will be constructed between Lake Elsinore to San Jacinto. This project, spearheaded by Riverside County Transportation Commission, is named 'Mid County Parkway'. It is unsure if this will receive a state signage in the future.
Southern California freeway firsts- First freeway in California
- First stack interchange
- First grade-separated HOV lanes
- First fully automated tollway system
List of freewaysMajor Freeways leading into and out of Southern California- Interstate 5 southbound to Tijuana in Baja California, Mexico, northbound to the Central Valley
- Interstate 8 west terminus in Ocean Beach in San Diego, eastbound to the Arizona State Line
- Interstate 10 west terminus at Santa Monica, California, eastbound to the Arizona State Line
- Interstate 15 south terminus in Barrio Logan in San Diego, northbound to the Nevada State Line
- Interstate 40 west terminus in Barstow, California, eastbound to the Arizona State Line
- U.S. Route 101 south terminus at the East L.A. Interchange, westbound to Santa Barbara, California then northbound to the Central Coast of California
- State Route 14, south terminus at Tunnel Station, northbound to Bishop, California
San Diego area- Interstate 8
- State Route 52
- State Route 54
- State Route 56
- State Route 67
- State Route 75
- San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge
- State Route 78
- Ronald Packard Parkway
- from Oceanside to Escondido
- State Route 94
- Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway
- from Downtown San Diego to Spring Valley
- State Route 125
- South Bay Expressway from Otay Mesa to Jamacha Road exit
- Ramona Freeway from Jamacha Road exit to Santee
- State Route 163
- Cabrillo Freeway
- from Downtown San Diego to Kearny Mesa at Interstate 15
- Interstate 805
- Jacob Dekema Freeway, also known as the Inland Freeway
- from San Ysidro to "The Merge" at Sorrento Valley
- Interstate 905
- Otay Mesa Freeway
- from San Ysidro to the Otay Mesa border crossing
Controlled access routes not maintained by the state
Greater Los Angeles(includes Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties)
- State Route 1
- freeway stub in Dana Point, leading north from Interstate 5
- freeway stub east of Oxnard
- State Route 2
- Interstate 5
- Interstate 10
- State Route 14
- Interstate 15
- State Route 22
- State Route 23
- State Route 33
- Interstate 40
- State Route 47
- State Route 55
- Costa Mesa Freeway, formerly Newport Freeway from Costa Mesa to Anaheim
- State Route 57
- State Route 58
- State Route 60
- State Route 71
- State Route 73
- Corona del Mar Freeway from Costa Mesa to Irvine
- San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor from Irvine to Laguna Niguel
- State Route 90
- State Route 91
- U.S. Route 101
- State Route 103
- Terminal Island Freeway co-signed from Seaside Avenue with State Route 47 to Sepulveda Blvd/Willow Street in Long Beach
- Interstate 105
- Glenn Anderson Freeway, more commonly known as the Century Freeway from El Segundo to Norwalk
- Interstate 110
- Harbor Freeway from San Pedro, California to Downtown L.A. at the interchange with the Santa Monica Freeway
- State Route 110
- State Route 118
- Ronald Reagan Freeway, also known as the Simi Valley-San Fernando Valley Freeway, or more simply, the Simi Valley Freeway from Moorpark to San Fernando
- State Route 133
- Laguna Freeway from just south of Interstate 405 to Interstate 5
- Eastern Transportation Corridor from Interstate 5 to State Route 241
- State Route 134
- State Route 138
- freeway stub east from Interstate 5 near Gorman
- State Route 170
- Interstate 210 and State Route 210
- Interstate 215
- State Route 241
- Foothill Transportation Corridor from Oso Parkway to the Eastern Transportation Corridor
- Eastern Transportation Corridor from the Foothill Transportation Corridor to the Riverside Freeway
- State Route 261
- Eastern Transportation Corridor from Jamboree Road near the Santa Ana Freeway to State Route 241
- Interstate 405
- Interstate 605
- San Gabriel River Freeway from Los Alamitos to Duarte
- Interstate 710
- Long Beach Freeway from Long Beach to Alhambra
- freeway stub south from the Foothill Freeway
Controlled-access routes not maintained by the state- Colorado Street former routing of State Route 134 from Interstate 5 to San Fernando Road just west of Glendale
- Colorado Freeway former routing of State Route 134 from Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock to the Ventura Freeway
- Oak Grove Drive in Pasadena, former routing of the Foothill Freeway
- Shoreline Drive in Long Beach
- La Cienega Boulevard in the Baldwin Hills, originally intended to be part of the discontinued Laurel Canyon Freeway
Named freeway interchanges
Other named features of the freeway system
External links- Live Streaming Traffic Cams
- Los Angeles Traffic Incident Information Page
- Los Angeles Traffic Report
- Named Freeways
- Southern California Trucking Accidents
- Wireless Traffic Reports for Southern Cal
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