The Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange is a

stack Stack may refer to: Places * Stack Island, an island game reserve in Bass Strait, south-eastern Australia, in Tasmania’s Hunter Island Group * Blue Stack Mountains, in Co. Donegal, Ireland People * Stack (surname) (including a list of people ...

interchange near the

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

and

Watts Watts is plural for ''watt'', the unit of power. Watts may also refer to: People * Watts (surname), list of people with the surname Watts Fictional characters *Watts, main character in the film '' Some Kind of Wonderful'' * Watts family, six cha ...

communities of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. It is the interchange of the following routes: * * The interchange permits traffic entering the interchange in all directions to exit in all directions (unlike, for example, the

Hollywood Split The Hollywood Split (officially Bruce T. Hinman Memorial Interchange) is a freeway interchange in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California. The interchange is officially named in the memory of California Highway Patrol officer Bruc ...

and

East Los Angeles Interchange The East Los Angeles Interchange is an interchange complex located in Boyle Heights, California, approximately 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Downtown Los Angeles. With its southern portion handling over 550,000 vehicles per day (2008 AADT), it is the ...

). The interchange also contains

Metro Green Line The Metro Green Line (formerly called the Central Corridor) is an light rail line that connects the central business districts of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota as well as the University of Minnesota. An extension is under constructi ...

tracks, direct HOV and

Metro ExpressLanes The Metro ExpressLanes project is a transport project in Los Angeles County, California that debuted in 2012 to "improve traffic flow and provide enhanced travel options on I-10 and I-110 in Los Angeles County". It includes a range of infrastruct ...

connectors, the

Harbor Transitway The Harbor Transitway (also known as the I-110 Express Lanes) is a shared-use express bus corridor (known as a busway or transitway) and high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes running in the median of Interstate 110 (Harbor Freeway) between Downtown ...

, and the

Harbor Freeway station Harbor Freeway station (formerly Harbor Freeway/I-105 station) is a transport hub located on the Harbor Transitway, within the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange of Interstate 105 and Interstate 110 near Figueroa Street in the neighborhood o ...

for the Green Line and the Transitway, all of which contribute to the towering, imposing structure for which the interchange is known. The interchange is over 130 feet high. Opened with Interstate 105 in 1993, the interchange is named after

Harry Pregerson Harry Pregerson (October 13, 1923 – November 25, 2017) was a United States circuit judge appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Pregerson was regarded as one of the judiciary's m ...

, a longtime

federal judge Federal judges are judges appointed by a federal level of government as opposed to the state/provincial/local level. United States A US federal judge is appointed by the US President and confirmed by the US Senate in accordance with Article 3 ...

who presided over the lawsuit concerning the I-105 freeway's construction.

Layout

Motorists entering the interchange on the freeway trunks from all directions have

freedom Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving one ...

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

Public transit

Metro C Line and Harbor Transitway

The interchange also houses the

Harbor Freeway A harbor (American English), harbour (British English; see spelling differences), or haven is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be docked. The term ''harbor'' is often used interchangeably with ''port'', which is a ...

Metro station A metro station or subway station is a station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the system in t ...

which jointly serves the

Metro C Line The Metro C Line is a bus rapid transit line in Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis, Minnesota operated by Metro Transit. The line is part of Metro Transit's Metro network of light rail and bus rapid transit lines. The route operates from the Broo ...

light rail and

bus corridor Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system designed to have much more capacity, reliability and other quality features than a conventional bus system. Typically, a BRT system includes ...

, which travel down the medians of I-105 and I-110, respectively.

History

As described in a 1989 ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' 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". In 1996, the U.S.

Federal Highway Administration The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two programs, the Federal-aid Highway Program ...

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.

In film

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 highway section the bus jumped over is the directional ramp from I-105 WB to I-110 NB (not the fifth level HOV ramp from I-110 SB to I-105 WB as commonly believed), and as the flyover was already constructed, a gap was added in the editing process using

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The image ...

with the help of

Sony Pictures Imageworks Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. is a Canadian visual effects and computer animation studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with an additional office on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California. SPI is a unit of Sony Pi ...

. A 2009 episode of ''

Mythbusters ''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internation ...

'' attempted to recreate the bus jump as proposed, including the various tricks that they knew were used by the filmmakers such as the ramp, and proved that the jump, as in the film, would never have been possible. It is featured in the 2011 movie ''Samsara''. For a full weekend in 2015, the left-side connector ramps between the I-105 HOV lanes and the I-110 HOT ExpressLanes were closed for filming the opening musical number of ''La La Land''.

References

External links

{{commonscat Road interchanges in California Southern California freeways Watts, Los Angeles Transportation buildings and structures in Los Angeles