More Big Bucks for Roads in California: Oh, Goody!

The State of California is getting ready to spend $20 billion, which we don't happen to have, but never mind that, on (hold your breath) freeway expansion!
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The State of California is getting ready to spend $20 billion, which we don't happen to have, but never mind that, on (hold your breath) freeway expansion! We don't have enough of them, and they're not wide enough.

If you happen to like to drive, or just be in a car on a freeway not actually driving in the sense of going forward, the Greater Los Angeles Basin is definitely the place for you.

Another great thing about the area is that the signage is very simple. It directs you through a number of gracefully intersecting freeways, like the 10, known as the Santa Monica Freeway, until it becomes the San Bernardino Freeway. This freeway simultaneously exists in two different, nearby locations at the same time. If the 10 is crowded, as it tends to be, you can take the 60, the Pomona Freeway, which parallels the 10 going east only a bit to the south, until it becomes the 215 for a while before it becomes the 60 again, eventually flowing into the 10. The 15 also crosses both the 10 and the 60, but if you miss the turn you can take the 215 about 14 miles east, and go north on that because it flows into the 15.

Then there is the 101, the Harbor Freeway, until it becomes the Hollywood Freeway, which then becomes the 170 at a certain point, when the 101 becomes the Ventura Freeway, only in the other direction it's called the 134. When you're on the 110 north, remember not to take the Pasadena Freeway which it becomes, instead of the Hollywood Freeway, (the 101) if you're headed for Hollywood or Burbank, and if you're going to Glendale there's a kind of tricky left lane exit onto the 2, the Glendale. You can get from the Ventura Freeway going east to the Hollywood Freeway south but unfortunately not the other way around.

The 101 is not to be confused with Route 1, even though they are actually the same freeway for a while, until they're not. After the 101 becomes the 134 it kind of flows into the 210, the Foothill Freeway, but watch out or you'll end up on the 2, the Glendale Freeway the other way, or the 5, the Golden State Freeway, which becomes the Santa Ana Freeway, and then the San Diego Freeway, but take care when you're coming back on the 5, or you'll fly right past the 405 going north which takes over the name San Diego Freeway at that point when the 5 becomes the Santa Ana again, so you won't get back to the Santa Monica which you will get to (eventually) by staying on the 405 and not taking the 605, the San Gabriel River Freeway, the 710, the Long Beach Freeway, or the 91, the Redondo Beach Freeway, which becomes shortly the Artesia Freeway and then the Riverside Freeway, but you really don't want to mess with any of those, especially the Long Beach off the 405, because the semis coming from Long Beach make that particular transition so hazardous that the ambulances just take you right to the morgue, and skip the hospitals altogether.

I didn't mention the Marina Freeway, sometimes called the Century, because it's just a little bit of a thing, or the 118, the San Fernando Valley Freeway, which intersects the 405, the 5 and the 210, or the Antelope Valley Freeway, the 14, off the 5, because I don't want this to be confusing. Also there are a lot of other freeways in Orange County.

So it's all pretty simple, and you get to wave to all the other drivers, but not to the other passengers, because we don't do passengers in LA.

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