Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange

Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange
The interchange, looking southbound on I-110
Location
South Los Angeles
Coordinates:	33°55′43″N 118°16′52″W / 33.9287°N 118.281°W / 33.9287; -118.281Coordinates: 33°55′43″N 118°16′52″W / 33.9287°N 118.281°W / 33.9287; -118.281
Roads at junction:	I-105 I-110
Construction
Maintained by:	Caltrans

The Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange is a stack interchange near the Athens and Watts communities of Los Angeles, California. It is the interchange of the following routes:

• I-105 (Glenn M. Anderson Freeway) – El Segundo, LAX Airport, Norwalk
• I-110 (Harbor Freeway) – San Pedro, Los Angeles

Though the interchange permits traffic entering the interchange in all directions to exit in all directions (cf. Hollywood Split, East Los Angeles Interchange), the interchange also consists of Metro Green Line tracks, direct HOV connectors, and the Harbor Transitway, all of which contribute to the towering, imposing structure for which the interchange is known.

Opened with Interstate 105 in 1993, the interchange is named after Harry Pregerson, a longtime federal judge who presided over the lawsuit concerning the I-105 freeway's construction.^[1][2]

Layout

Traffic entering the interchange on the freeway trunks from all directions has freedom to exit the interchange in all possible directions of travel (i.e., it is a complete interchange). Nearly all ramps are direct (an inherent advantage of the stack interchange design) and can be driven at near-mainline speeds if not congested; the main exception is the ramp from northbound I-110 to westbound I-105, which is a cloverleaf loop.

However, traffic using direct high-occupancy vehicle lane connectors is more restricted. Motorists entering eastbound or westbound on the I-105 HOV lanes may connect to the northbound I-110 HOV lanes. Motorists entering the interchange on the southbound I-110 HOV lanes may connect to either the eastbound or westbound I-105 HOV lanes, while motorists entering northbound on the I-110 HOV lanes do not have direct HOV connectors to I-105 and may only continue northbound. HOV drivers wishing to connect to a direction of travel for which there is no direct HOV connector must exit the HOV lane at a designated entry/exit point before the interchange and use the mainline connectors, as is typical for HOV lanes in Southern California.

Metro Green Line & Harbor Transitway

The interchange also houses the Harbor Freeway Metro station which jointly serves the Metro Green Line light rail and Harbor Transitway bus corridor, which travel down the medians of I-105 and I-110, respectively.

History

As described in a 1989 Los Angeles Times article, the interchange, connecting the existing I-110 with the new I-105 (then called the Century Freeway), was designed to be "biggest, tallest, most costly traffic structure yet built by California Department of Transportation" and "the first time the state's traffic engineers have integrated three modes of transportation--light-rail trains, high-occupancy vehicles and individual cars--into one giant intersection".^[3]

Shortly before the interchange opened, filmmakers had access to use it for the 1994 motion picture Speed. In one of the movie's best-known scenes, the bus must jump across an unfinished construction gap in an uncompleted elevated freeway-to-freeway ramp while still under construction. The fifth-level HOV flyover (I-110 SB to I-105 WB) that the bus jumped had already been completed, so a gap was added in the editing process using computer-generated imagery.^[4]

In 1996, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration recognized the Interstate 105/Interstate 110 interchange with an Award of Merit in the Urban Highways category of its biennial Excellence in Highway Design awards. The award recognized the interchange's design, which sought to improve traffic congestion, safety, and air quality.^[5]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange.