The Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange is a five-level stack interchange near the

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and

Watts Watts is plural for ''watt'', the unit of power. Watts may also refer to: People *Watts (surname), a list of people with the surname Watts Fictional characters *Albie Watts, a fictional character in the British soap opera ''EastEnders'' *Angie ...

communities of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, California. 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 and East Los Angeles Interchange). The interchange also contains Metro C Line tracks, direct

HOV A high-occupancy vehicle lane (also known as an HOV lane, carpool lane, diamond lane, 2+ lane, and transit lane or T2 or T3 lanes) is a restricted traffic lane reserved for the exclusive use of vehicles with a driver and at least one passenger, ...

and Metro ExpressLanes connectors, the Harbor Transitway, and the

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

for the C Line and the 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

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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 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. 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

The interchange also houses the

Harbor Freeway Route 110, consisting of State Route 110 (SR 110) and Interstate 110 (I-110), is a state and auxiliary Interstate Highway in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of the US state of California. The entire route connects San Pe ...

Metro station A metro station or subway station is a train 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 syste ...

which jointly serves the Metro C Line

light rail Light rail (or light rail transit, abbreviated to LRT) is a form of passenger urban rail transit that uses rolling stock derived from tram technology National Conference of the Transportation Research Board while also having some features from ...

and Harbor Transitway bus corridor, which travel down the medians of I-105 and I-110, respectively.

History

As described in a 1989 ''

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'' 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 a ...

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 popular culture

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, a 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

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with the help of

Sony Pictures Imageworks Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. (simply known as Imageworks) is a visual effects and computer animation studio headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and Montreal, Quebec, with an additional office on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver C ...

. A 2009 episode of ''

Mythbusters ''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television series created by Peter Rees (producer), Peter Rees and produced by Beyond International in Australia. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast in ...

'' 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