Interstate 405 (California)

Interstate 405
San Diego Freeway
Route information
Defined by Streets and Highways Code § 615
Maintained by Caltrans
Length:	72.415 mi[1] (116.541 km)
Existed:	1964 – present
Major junctions
South end:	I-5 in Irvine
	SR 55 in Costa Mesa SR 22 / I-605 in Seal Beach I-710 in Long Beach I-110 in Carson I-105 near LAX Airport I-10 in West Los Angeles US 101 in Sherman Oaks
North end:	I-5 near San Fernando
Highway system
Interstate Highway System Main Auxiliary Suffixed Business State highways in California Interstate U.S. State Pre-1964 History Unconstructed Deleted Freeway Scenic ← US 395 US 466 →

Interstate 405 (usually pronounced four-oh-five), also known as I-405 or "the 405", is a major north–south Interstate Highway in Southern California. It is a bypass of Interstate 5, running along the western and southern parts of the Greater Los Angeles Area from Irvine in the south to near San Fernando in the north. The entire route is known as the northern segment of the San Diego Freeway.

I-405 is a heavily traveled thoroughfare by both commuters and by freight haulers along its entire length and is the busiest and most congested freeway in the United States.^[2][3] The freeway's annual average daily traffic between exits 21 and 22 in Seal Beach reached 374,000 in 2008, making it the highest count in the nation.^[4] It has played a crucial role in the development of dozens of cities and suburbs along its route through Los Angeles and Orange counties.

This route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System.^[5]

Route description

I-405 in the Sepulveda Pass

Interstate 405 begins at the El Toro Y interchange with Interstate 5 in southeastern Irvine. It then runs northwest through Orange County to Long Beach in Los Angeles County. The freeway then roughly follows the outline of the Pacific coast, varying between five and ten miles (16 km) inland before crossing over the Sepulveda Pass in the Santa Monica Mountains. I-405 next travels northerly through the San Fernando Valley, before its termination with I-5 in the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles. Large portions of the route closely parallel Sepulveda Boulevard.

The San Diego Freeway, near the interchange with the Ventura Freeway (U.S. Route 101)

The freeway's congestion problems are legendary, leading to jokes that the road was numbered 405 because traffic moves at "four or five" miles per hour, or because drivers need "four or five" hours to get anywhere. Indeed, average speeds as low as 5 mph are routinely recorded during morning and afternoon commutes, and its interchanges with the Ventura Freeway (U.S. Route 101) and with the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) each consistently rank among the five most congested freeway interchanges in the United States. As a result of these congestion problems, it may take longer to pass through the entire Los Angeles area using this bypass route instead of merely taking the primary route I-5 through Downtown.

Of the major reasons for the excessively heavy traffic on the freeway, the 405 is the only major North-South freeway in the densely populated areas between West LA and Downtown, crossing the Santa Monica Mountains and connecting San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles basin. Another parallel freeway is actually needed to connect SF Valley and central LA basin (proposed as Laurel Canyon Freeway or La Cienega Freeway); not only to reduce the strain on 405 but also ease heavily trafficked and time consuming East-West drives on arterial streets through numerous traffic lights, however has not been built due to politics -- upper class movie star resident opposition.^[6] Despite 4 years of construction disruptions, billions of dollars of public money, LA Times commentary claims traffic with the lane expansions is actually just as bad or worse.^[7]

Commuters are known to despise the freeway. Steve Harvey of the Los Angeles Times once featured a personalized license plate with the text HATE405 in his column.

Points of interest

The Bristol exit near South Coast Plaza and Segerstrom Center for the Arts, with Saddleback in the background

There are a number of points of interest that I-405 passes by or connects to. For transportation, these include (in the order passed from south to north) John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Long Beach Municipal Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. With connections, it is also very close to the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Los Angeles and Burbank Airport.

Some of the educational institutions it passes include the California state universities at Dominguez Hills, Long Beach, and Northridge; the University of California at Irvine and UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, and Pepperdine University's West LA and Irvine campuses.

I-405 also passes cultural facilities such as the Getty Center, the Skirball Cultural Center and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. In addition, several shopping malls such as Sherman Oaks Galleria, Westfield Culver City, The Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, Westminster Mall, South Coast Plaza and the Irvine Spectrum Center are located along I-405.

The route also passes by or through many recreation and commercial destinations. These include more than ten California state beaches, several other beaches owned by counties and municipalities, many of the beach cities favored by tourists, as well as Century City and Marina del Rey.

The view from the Getty Center, south of the Sepulveda Pass, looking east, south, and west. The San Diego Freeway can be seen at the center

History

1955 map of the planned Interstates in the Los Angeles area. Present-day I-405 roughly corresponds to the 1955 proposed route through the western regions of the area.

Civil engineers Marilyn Reece & Carol Schumaker, at the Reece-designed I-10/I-405 interchange, 1964

I-405 was approved as a chargeable interstate (in other words, an interstate financed with federal funds) in 1955. Construction began in 1957 with the first section, mostly north of LAX Airport being completed in 1961 (signed as SR 7) followed by sections west of Interstate 605 within the following few years. The highway was renumbered to Interstate 405 during the 1964 renumbering. The final section covering most of Orange County opened in 1969. Construction required the already existing Mulholland Highway to be re-routed 1.1 miles to the south along a new 579-foot-long bridge, the Mulholland Drive Bridge, to span Interstate 405.^[8]

The freeway from present-day I-10 to I-5 near San Fernando was once known as the "Sepulveda Freeway" as it was named for Sepulveda Boulevard.^[9]

"Carmageddon"

A section of I-405 was closed over the weekend of Friday, July 15, 2011 as part of the Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project.^[10] Before the closing, local radio DJs and television newscasts referred to it as "Carmageddon" and "Carpocalypse", parodying the notion of Armageddon and the Apocalypse, since it was anticipated that the closure would severely impact traffic.^[11][12]

In reality, traffic was lighter than normal across a wide area. California Department of Transportation reported that fewer vehicles used the roads than usual, and those who did travel by road arrived more quickly than on a normal weekend.^[13] The Metrolink commuter train system recorded its highest-ever weekend ridership since it began operating in 1991. Ridership was 50% higher than the same weekend in 2010, and 10% higher than the previous weekend ridership record, which occurred during the U2 360° Tour in June 2011.^[14] In response to jetBlue Airlines' offer of special flights between Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and Long Beach Airport, a distance of only 29 mi (47 km), for $4,^[15][16] a group of cyclists did the same journey in one and a half hours, compared to two and a half hours by plane (including a drive to the airport from West Hollywood 90 minutes in advance of the flight and travel time to the end destination).^[17] There was also some debate about whether the Los Angeles area could benefit from car-free weekends on a regular basis.^[13]

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority had full closure of a 10-mile stretch of I-405 on the weekend of September 29–30, 2012, while construction crews worked to demolish a portion of the Mulholland Bridge.^[18]

In progress

Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project

The $1 billion Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project will add a high-occupancy vehicle lane and associated changes to freeway entrances, exits, and underpasses along a 10-mile stretch through the Sepulveda Pass between I-10 and U.S. 101/Ventura Boulevard.^[19] The project is to be completed as a design-build in contrast to the traditional design-bid-build used typically in infrastructure improvement. This section of I-405 was closed for a weekend in mid-July 2011 to demolish the Mulholland Drive Bridge, and a 10-mile section was closed for the last weekend of September 2012 (See 'Carmageddon 2011' and 'Carmageddon 2012' above).^[10] Construction is expected to be completed in the summer of 2014.^[20]

Jamzilla was the name for the 405 closure on President's Day Weekend 2014. There were lane closures and complete closures on the 405 Freeway started Feb. 14 at 10pm till Feb. 18 at 6 a.m to pave and re-stripe the northbound lanes.^[21]

On May 23, 2014, the 10-mile high-occupancy vehicle lane was opened to traffic.^[22]

Future

Manchester and Century Boulevard interchanges

Proposed changes between the Manchester and Century Boulevard interchanges in Inglewood to provide a new southbound on-ramp and a new northbound off-ramp for Arbor Vitae Street, to reconstruct and widened the Arbor Vitae Street over-bridge and replace the Century Boulevard overcrossing structure.^[23] This work would reduce congestion on the approach to Los Angeles International Airport. The California Department of Transportation has not yet issued a start date for this work.

Orange County

The Orange County Transportation Authority is currently studying a proposal to add a HOT lane between Highway 73 in Costa Mesa and I-605 in Seal Beach.^[24]

Incidents

UCLA protest 1966

Following the 1966 UCLA-USC rivalry game, USC was voted into the Rose Bowl despite the UCLA team's having defeated the Trojans—with both teams having only one loss during the season. UCLA students protested by blocking the freeway's northbound lanes at Wilshire Boulevard.

The O.J. Simpson chase 1994

While dangerous high-speed chases along the San Diego Freeway are not uncommon, perhaps the most famous chase in its history was also one of the slowest. On the afternoon of June 17, 1994, former football star O.J. Simpson, a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and waiter Ronald Goldman, took to the freeway in a white Ford Bronco (driven by former USC teammate Al Cowlings) with police in pursuit. A bizarre, widely televised low-speed chase ensued and ended hours later when Simpson returned to his Brentwood estate via the Sunset Boulevard exit and surrendered to law enforcement.^[25]

Murder of Ennis Cosby 1997

Ennis Cosby, the only son of Bill Cosby, was murdered along I-405 in Los Angeles on January 16, 1997, while fixing a flat tire.^[26]

In popular culture

I-405 was the location for the short film 405.

The Death Cab For Cutie song "405" on their second studio album, We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, is often incorrectly associated with California's I-405. The song is actually referring to I-405 in Seattle, Washington. The band is from Bellingham, and is referencing the songwriter's drive south to Seattle to visit a girlfriend at the time of writing.^[27]

TV writer Chuck Lorre used his end-of-show vanity card #429 (November 2013) to berate workers on the 405 for their apparent lack of progress after five years.^[28]

The Swedish rock band Europe's song "California 405" is featured on their 2015 studio album War of Kings.

Exit list

Except where prefixed with a letter, postmiles were measured on the road as it was in 1964, based on the alignment that existed at the time, and do not necessarily reflect current mileage. R reflects a realignment in the route since then, M indicates a second realignment, L refers an overlap due to a correction or change, and T indicates postmiles classified as temporary (for a full list of prefixes, see the list of postmile definitions).^[1] Segments that remain unconstructed or have been relinquished to local control may be omitted. The numbers reset at county lines; the start and end postmiles in each county are given in the county column.

County	Location	Postmile [1][29][30]	Exit [31]	Destinations	Notes
Orange ORA 0.23–24.18	Irvine	0.23		I-5 south (San Diego Freeway) – San Diego	Southbound exit and northbound entrance; former US 101 south; southern terminus; I-5 north exit 94A
		​	1A	Lake Forest Drive	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		​	1B	Bake Parkway	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		0.95	1C	Irvine Center Drive	Signed as exit 1 northbound
		1.80	2	SR 133 (Laguna Freeway) – Laguna Beach	No northbound exit to SR 133 north; SR 133 north exit 8, south exits 8A-B
		2.88	3	Shady Canyon Drive, Sand Canyon Avenue
		3.95	4	Jeffrey Road, University Drive
		5.62	5	Culver Drive
		6.92	7	Jamboree Road
		7.80	8	MacArthur Boulevard – John Wayne Airport
	Costa Mesa	8.74	9A	SR 55 (Costa Mesa Freeway)	SR 55 north exit 6, south exits 6A-B
		​	9B	Anton Boulevard, Avenue of the Arts	Northbound exit and entrance
		9.51	9B	Bristol Street
		10.28	10	SR 73 south (Corona del Mar Freeway) to SR 55 south (Costa Mesa Freeway) – San Diego via toll road	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		​	11	South Coast Drive	Northbound exit only
		10.75	11A	Fairview Road	Signed as exit 11 northbound
		11.45	11B	Harbor Boulevard – Costa Mesa	Signed as exit 11 northbound
	Fountain Valley	12.47	12	Euclid Street, Newhope Street, Ellis Avenue
		13.78	14	Brookhurst Street – Fountain Valley
		14.82	15A	Warner Avenue east	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
	Huntington Beach	15.21	15B	Magnolia Street, Warner Avenue west	Signed as exit 15 northbound
		16.54	16	SR 39 (Beach Boulevard) – Westminster, Huntington Beach
	Westminster	17.75	18	Bolsa Avenue, Goldenwest Street	Goldenwest Street is signed as Golden West Street
		19.16	19	Westminster Avenue, Springdale Street
		​	20	Bolsa Chica Road	Southbound exit only
		20.75	21	SR 22 east (Garden Grove Freeway) / Valley View Street – Garden Grove	South end of SR 22 overlap
	Seal Beach	22.64	22	Seal Beach Boulevard, Los Alamitos Boulevard	Former SR 35
		23.28	23	SR 22 west (7th Street) – Long Beach	North end of SR 22 overlap; I-605 exit 1A
		24.04	24A	I-605 north (San Gabriel River Freeway)	Signed as exit 24 northbound; I-605 south exits 1B-1C; SR 22 east exit 2
Los Angeles LA 0.27–48.64	Long Beach	0.45	24B	Studebaker Road	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		1.11	25	Palo Verde Avenue
		1.64	26A	Woodruff Avenue	No southbound exit
		2.18	26B	Bellflower Boulevard	Signed as exit 26 southbound
		3.32	27	SR 19 (Lakewood Boulevard) – Long Beach Airport
		4.88	29	Spring Street, Cherry Avenue – Signal Hill	Signed as exits 29A (south) and 29B (north)
	Signal Hill	5.39	29C	Orange Avenue
	Long Beach	6.08	30A	Atlantic Avenue
		6.34	30B	Long Beach Boulevard	Former SR 15
		6.70	32A	Pacific Avenue	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		7.60	32	I-710 (Long Beach Freeway) – Long Beach, Pasadena	Signed as exits 32A (north) and 32B (south) northbound, and 32B (south) and 32C (north) southbound; I-710 exit 4
		8.06	32C	Hughes Way, Santa Fe Avenue	Signed as exit 32D southbound
	Carson	8.78	33A	Alameda Street (SR 47 south)
		9.56	33B	Wilmington Avenue
		10.54	34	Carson Street
		11.22	35	Avalon Boulevard – Carson	Northbound exit to Avalon Boulevard south is via exit 34
		12.60	36	Main Street	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
		12.97	37A	I-110 (Harbor Freeway) – San Pedro, Los Angeles	Signed as exit 37 northbound; former US 6; I-110 exit 9
	Los Angeles	13.28	37B	Vermont Avenue	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		13.83	38A	Normandie Avenue – Gardena
		14.40	38B	Western Avenue
	Torrance	15.45	39	Crenshaw Boulevard – Torrance
		16.57	40	To SR 91 / Artesia Boulevard	Signed as exit 40A southbound; former SR 91
		16.88	40B	Redondo Beach Boulevard   - Redondo Beach	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
	Lawndale	17.59	42A	SR 107 (Hawthorne Boulevard) – Lawndale
	Redondo Beach	18.23	42B	Inglewood Avenue
	Hawthorne	19.21	43	Rosecrans Avenue – Manhattan Beach	Signed as exits 43A (east) and 43B (west) southbound
		20.22	44	El Segundo Boulevard – El Segundo
	Los Angeles	R21.18	45A	I-105 (Century Freeway) – El Segundo, Norwalk	Signed as exit 45 southbound; serves Los Angeles International Airport; I-105 east exit 2, west exit 2B
		R21.22	45B	Imperial Highway	Southbound exit is part of exit 46
	Inglewood	22.22	46	Century Boulevard – LAX Airport
		23.36	47	Manchester Boulevard, La Cienega Boulevard, Florence Avenue	Manchester Boulevard was former SR 42
	Los Angeles	24.27	48	La Tijera Boulevard
		24.56	49A	Howard Hughes Parkway, Sepulveda Boulevard	Signed as exit 49 southbound
	Culver City	25.46	49B	Sepulveda Boulevard, Slauson Avenue (SR 90 east)	Northbound exit only; SR 90 exit 2
		25.95	50A	Jefferson Boulevard	Signed as exit 50B northbound
		25.95	50B	SR 90 (Marina Freeway) / Slauson Avenue – Marina del Rey	Signed as exit 50A northbound; no access from I-405 north to SR 90 east; SR 90 exit 2
		27.20	51	Culver Boulevard, Washington Boulevard – Culver City
		27.96	52	Venice Boulevard (SR 187), Washington Boulevard
	Los Angeles	29.16	53A	National Boulevard	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
		29.54	53B	I-10 (Santa Monica Freeway) – Santa Monica, Los Angeles	Signed as exit 53 southbound; I-10 exits 3A-B
		30.18	54	Olympic Boulevard, Pico Boulevard	Southbound exit and northbound entrance; former SR 26
		30.86	55A	SR 2 (Santa Monica Boulevard)	Former US 66
		31.54	55B	Wilshire Boulevard	Signed as exits 55B (east) and 55C (west) southbound
		32.50	56	Montana Avenue	Northbound exit only; demolished[32]
		33.00	57A	Sunset Boulevard	Signed as exit 57 southbound
		33.29	57B	Moraga Drive	Northbound exit and entrance
		34.76	59	Getty Center Drive
		36.03	61	Mulholland Drive, Skirball Center Drive
		39.00	63A	Ventura Boulevard, Sepulveda Boulevard, Valley Vista Boulevard
		39.43	63B	US 101 (Ventura Freeway) – Ventura, Los Angeles	US 101 exit 19A
		40.29	64	Burbank Boulevard
		41.36	65	Victory Boulevard – Van Nuys
		42.36	66	Sherman Way – Van Nuys Airport	Signed as exits 66A (east) and 66B (west) northbound
		43.76	68	Roscoe Boulevard – Panorama City
		44.74	69	Nordhoff Street
		46.24	70	Devonshire Street – Granada Hills
		46.85	71A	SR 118 (Ronald Reagan Freeway) – Simi Valley	Signed as exit 71 southbound; no southbound exit to SR 118 east or northbound entrance from SR 118 west; SR 118 east exit 42A, west exit 42B
		47.24	71B	San Fernando Mission Boulevard – San Fernando	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
		47.75	72	Rinaldi Street – Mission Hills
		48.64		I-5 north (Golden State Freeway) – Bakersfield, Sacramento	Northbound exit and southbound entrance; north end of I-405; I-5 south exit 158
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi       Concurrency terminus       Incomplete access

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Interstate 405 (California).

Route map: Bing / Google

Auxiliary routes of Interstate 5
California 105 1051 205 3055 405 505 605 805 9052 Oregon 105 205 3054 405 5054 Washington 205 405 6053 705
1Former 2Future 3Proposed 4Unbuilt 5Unsigned