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There's A Campaign To Fix The 110 Freeway's Ramps From Hell
A photograph of the new freeway in 1940: "First motorists to travel over the new link are pictured at the Avenue 53 bridge. The freeway is divided in the center by a small parkway. Each side has three wide lanes for traffic. The new part runs from Avenue 40 to Orange Grove drive. The Glenarm-Fair Oaks section has been open some time." (Photograph courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library)
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Fun fact: the winding, often terrifying Arroyo Seco Parkway (aka the 110) was the first freeway in the Western United States when it opened in 1940. It was shorter then, and built to handle 27,000 cars a day but when it was updated in 2010, it carried more than four times that. It's one of our more scenic freeways, sure, but it also feels every bit its age with its narrow lanes, sharp turns and its horrifying on and off-ramps.
At some of its entrances, you have to gun it from a stop sign and cross your fingers that oncoming traffic from around the bend will see you in time to slow down. At some of its exits, you have to hope that the guy behind you won't rear-end you when you try to slow down and make a sharp turn immediately after exiting. Now there's a campaign to fix this section of the freeway that sometimes feels like a death trap.
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Godspeed: here's the on-ramp from Avenue 43. (Google Maps)
Jack Fenn of Montecito Heights and Clare Marter-Kenyon of Mount Washington started a petition asking State Senator Kevin de Leon to turn the right lanes around Avenue 43—a particularly dangerous section—into dedicated lanes for getting on and off the freeway.
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The petition notes that Caltrans proposed to do just this—as well as a host of other costly measures—in the Arroyo Seco Parkway Corridor Partnership Plan created in 2012. But they would like this part of the plan to be fastracked.
"I use the parkway on a daily basis during the week and see the results of accidents," Marter Kenyon told The Eastsider LA. "I have ceased to use [the] northbound on-ramp, as I feel I am a sitting duck for those who do not heed the 5 mile per hour warning, or notice it too late to avoid an accident."
Caltrans told The Eastsider that they're looking into converting that right lane to an ingress/egress lane during off-peak hours, and we should expect a report on the study in a month or two.
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