Today, the Montana offramp from the Northbound I-405 (San Diego Freeway) will close permanently. Here’s the obituary from LA Metro I read while eating lunch. In it, they talk about the rarety of closing freeway offramps, and pose the question: “After all, how often do California travelers witness the disappearance of entire off-ramp?”
The answer is: Quite a bit.
Here are some that I remember, or at least knew about:
- Southbound I-405, Waterford Avenue. This was the sibling of the Montana offramp, on the SB side of the freeway. It was lost shortly before the HOV lane was added SB.
- National/Pico Ramps from I-405. The Santa Monica Freeway, I-10, was built almost 5 years after I-405 was built through West LA. When originally constructed, there were NB and SB offramps at National and at Olympic/Pico. Construction of the I-10 interchange led to the loss of the SB National offramp, and the NB Olympic/Pico offramp.
- US 101 Haskell On-Ramp. Those who travel US 101 know that there are NB and SB offramps for Haskell Blvd, just next to the I-405 interchange. For the longest time, there was also the remnant of a removed on-ramp from Magnolia (between Haskell and Densmore) to US 101.
- Firestone Blvd off I-5. Back in March, one of the few remaining left exits from I-5, Firestone Blvd, was permanently closed as part of the widening in that area.
So what on or off-ramp permanent closures do you remember? I know that there were some in Northern California near where US 101 and I-880 diverge.
I am thinking of Virginia, not California, because this past Thursday night, the Des Moines Ave off-ramp from I-264 E closed permanently. It was the most convenient eastbound exit to get home. In the spring, the South St on-ramp to I-264 W will close also.
In this case, the Martin Luther King Freeway is being extended so that there will be a link between the I-264 Downtown Tunnel and the US 58 Midtown Tunnel. Of course, as part of this the new MLK extension will be tolled, along with the Midtown Tunnel (which will gain a second tube an an extra lane in each direction) and the Downtown Tunnel (which will receive nothing more than maintenance, but is included in the tolls to make the PPP more attractive to private sector partners).
Tolls will start in February. I think most of the work should be done by the summer of 2015.
Wow, you’ve hit all the ones I remember (obviously, with both of us being native Angelenos). The Waterford ramp was tweaked near the end of its life to force a right turn onto Church Ln.
I am too young to remember the National Bl./Olympic Blvd. ones. I do remember the Magnolia vestige, and I even used it a few times when it existed. I think.
Another one which could qualify is the ramp from the NB I-405 to US-101 ramp back to NB I-405, for the Sepulveda/Ventura on-ramp, and its sibling the Ventura Blvd. off-ramp from the SB I-405. In both cases, you had to make a mad dash across two or three lanes.
I did notice something the other day up at this end of the state. It looks like that there used to be something on the transition from EB CA-92 to SB US-101, or maybe there was something planned but never built. I’m not sure what it could have been, though. The roadway widens and there is a BGS gantry, but there’s only one sign, for US-101 SB.
Here in Roseville, there used to be a tunnel ramp for NB Atlantic St. to NB I-80. It was eliminated when the interchange was rebuilt for the extension of Eureka Rd.
There used to be a Lemon Street exit off of the eastbound Pomona Freeway. It’s gone.
Also, although not exactly the same, the westbound San Bernardino Freeway no longer has a connection to the southbound 101 just east of downtown LA.
Oh, and there used to be exits and onramps for Hollenbeck Street and Lark Ellen Street in West Covina off of the San Bernardino Freeway.
The closed them and replaced them with underpasses.