California State Route 60

State Highway Junction Route CA-60 Westbound Moreno Valleyâ¦ | Flickr

src: c1.staticflickr.com

State Route 60 (SR 60) is an east-west state highway in the U.S. state of California. It runs from the East Los Angeles Interchange near downtown Los Angeles to an interchange with Interstate 10 (I-10) in Beaumont. The highway serves the cities and communities on the eastern side of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and runs along the south side of the San Gabriel Valley. The highway provides a route across several spurs of the Peninsular Ranges, linking the Los Angeles Basin with the Pomona Valley and San Gabriel Valley. It runs from the East Los Angeles Interchange near the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles with Interstate 5 (I-5), Interstate 10 (I-10) and U.S. Route 101 (US 101) east to I-10 in Riverside County, with overlaps at State Route 57 and Interstate 215. The highway runs roughly parallel to Interstate 10, functioning as a bypass alternate route east-west route through the area.

Video California State Route 60

Route description

SR 60 begins at the East Los Angeles Interchange near downtown Los Angeles, designated as the Pomona Freeway. The freeway heads east from the junction after splitting off from the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10) and passes through East Los Angeles, intersecting the Long Beach Freeway (I-710). Continuing east through the southern San Gabriel Valley, SR 60 passes through many cities and communities, intersecting the San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605) in the City of Industry. It proceeds to an overlap with the Orange Freeway (SR 57) in Diamond Bar, right on the edge of the San Gabriel Valley.

A short overlap carries SR 60 traffic on the same roadway as SR 57. The two routes head northeast through an arm of the San Gabriel Valley; after they split, SR 60 ascends slightly and then slopes through the Puente Hills and into the Pomona Valley. Continuing east, SR 60 intersects the Chino Valley Freeway (SR 71) in Pomona, the Ontario Freeway (I-15) in Jurupa Valley, and the Riverside Freeway (SR 91/I-215) in Riverside, California.

A short overlap carries SR 60 traffic on the same roadway as I-215. The two routes head southeast; after this, SR 60 is designated as the Moreno Valley Freeway. The freeway runs through communities further east in the Inland Empire. After passing through Moreno Valley, SR 60 runs through the rugged hill country to the east (known as the Badlands to the locals). After that, SR 60 downgrades to an expressway, and has with several at-grade interchanges with local roads. Finally, in Beaumont, SR 60 ends and merges into the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway (I-10).

SR 60 traverses Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. As it passes through many of Los Angeles' east side suburbs in southern San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, it is a major transportation corridor. For the majority of its length it is generally parallel to, and south of, the San Bernardino Freeway, Interstate 10 (I-10), and generally parallel to, and north of, the Riverside Freeway, California State Route 91. Traffic congestion is exacerbated by the rapid population growth and, therefore, residential, commercial, and industrial development in the inland communities known informally as the Inland Empire. In particular, it has become increasingly clogged of late with shipping container-laden trucks travelling from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to rail yards and warehouses in the Inland Empire. As a result of the rapid development of the Inland Empire since the 1980s, the Moreno Valley Freeway now suffers from severe traffic congestion. In the mid-2000s, the northwestern section that is concurrently signed with Interstate 215 underwent significant construction to improve traffic flow, but it still suffers from heavy congestion.

The freeway is known as the Pomona Freeway from its western terminus to its junction with State Route 91 and Interstate 215 in Riverside, and the Moreno Valley Freeway east of this interchange until its eastern terminus at its junction with Interstate 10. The route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System, and is part of the National Highway System, a network of highways that are considered essential to the country's economy, defense, and mobility by the Federal Highway Administration.

Maps California State Route 60

History

The route takes its number from former U.S. Route 60, which now begins near Brenda, Arizona and terminates on the east coast at Virginia Beach, Virginia. Before 1964, U.S. 60 ran from Los Angeles to the Arizona state line, where it continued its nationwide trek, often overlapping U.S. 99 and U.S. 70 along the way. The advent of Interstate 10 created a situation where, at one point, four different signed routes would run along the state-maintained highway.

In 1964, California implemented a plan to simplify its highway-numbering system, where one state highway had only one route number and concurrencies were sternly discouraged. As a result, the U.S. 60 designation (along with U.S. 70 and U.S. 99) was removed. Interstate 10 (as Route 10) superseded U.S. 60's alignment from Beaumont and towards the Arizona state line, even though the routing was only partly a freeway. This left the officially designated Route 60 from Beaumont to Los Angeles orphaned from its original U.S. Highway (which to this day begins at a point on Interstate 10 east of Quartzsite, Arizona). This new Route 60 was provisionally signed as a U.S. Highway since the designation would guide motorists from Los Angeles to Arizona in the absence of a completed freeway for Interstate 10; when all of Route 10 was upgraded to a freeway, the U.S. Highway designation disappeared.

At least one California highway sign managed to be overlooked for many years afterward. A sign on Hess Boulevard at California State Route 62 in the unincorporated town of Morongo Valley pointing not to Interstate 10 but to U.S. 60 (with evidence of the sign having pointed to both U.S. 70 and U.S. 99 as well) stood through the early 2000s. It has since been removed.

The stretch of Route 60 along the Moreno Valley Freeway made national headlines in April 2004, when five-year-old Ruby Bustamante of Indio and her 26-year-old mother, Norma, were reported missing. Their car had left the road, apparently unwitnessed, between the gap in two guard rails on April 4. It then crashed underneath a tree in a deep ravine. Though Mrs. Bustamante lost her life, presumably at the moment of impact, Ruby survived on her own for ten days on cups of uncooked Top Ramen noodles and bottles of Gatorade which were in the car.

In 2005, construction of an HOV lane started between I-605 to Redlands Boulevard in three phases. The construction was finished in 2010 between I-605 to SR 57, 2007 between SR 57 and I-15, and 2008 between I-15 to Redlands Boulevard. The Grand Avenue (exit 24B) interchange went through some major construction during this period as well, which included adding a direct HOV connector to SR 57 and an alternate route for SR 60 west to exit Brea Canyon Road (exit 23). There are no plans to construct the HOV lanes from I-605 to the East Los Angeles Interchange or from Redlands Boulevard to Interstate 10 at this time.

On December 14, 2011, a tanker truck carrying 8,800 gallons of gasoline caught fire and exploded on the Pomona Freeway in Montebello, causing Caltrans to have to rebuild the Paramount Boulevard overpass. Shortly after the rebuilding of the bridge, Caltrans did widening work on Paramount Boulevard's exit and entrance ramps to accommodate the new bridge and installed new traffic signals. There is also a new connection to the new Monterey Park Market Place via Neil Armstrong Street, which can be accessed through Paramount Boulevard.

In mid-2016, Caltrans started to construct a partial interchange at Lemon Avenue (to Brea Canyon Road) with no westbound exit. The project will finish in the summer of 2018. On May 1, 2018, the Lemon Avenue eastbound off-ramp exit and westbound on-ramp were opened. The eastbound on-ramp is still under construction. Also, on May 1, 2018, the eastbound off-ramp exit on Brea Canyon Road was removed, but the eastbound on-ramp will continue to remain as it provides easy access to SR 57 south.

California State Highway Junction Route CA-91 Redondo Beach ...

src: c1.staticflickr.com

Future

The full scrapping of the Brea Canyon Road eastbound off-ramp and construction of the eastbound on-ramp off Lemon Avenue has yet to be complete.

Another major project will reconstruct the interchange and rebuild the bridge with Grand Avenue on the east to ease bottleneck conditions with the merging of SR 57 north. On the west, the exit ramps are being rebuilt. The eastern portion will begin in 2020.

There have been talks to convert SR 60 from the Jack Rabbit trail exit to the eastern terminus (I-10) to a full-on freeway.

src: farm5.staticflickr.com

Exit list

Except where prefixed with a letter, postmiles were measured on the road as it was in 1964, based on the alignment that existed at the time, and do not necessarily reflect current mileage. R reflects a realignment in the route since then, M indicates a second realignment, L refers an overlap due to a correction or change, and T indicates postmiles classified as temporary (for a full list of prefixes, see the list of postmile definitions). Segments that remain unconstructed or have been relinquished to local control may be omitted. The numbers reset at county lines; the start and end postmiles in each county are given in the county column.