State Route 60 is a state highway in the U.S. state of California. It runs from Interstate 10 near the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles east to I-10 in Riverside County, with overlaps at State Route 57 and Interstate 215.
Video California State Route 60
Route description
Route 60 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 west terminus of the freeway is at the East Los Angeles Interchange complex. The east terminus is at the junction with Interstate 10 (I-10) in Beaumont. This 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. The freeway is known as the Pomona Freeway west of its junction with State Route 91 and Interstate 215 in Riverside. East of this interchange the freeway is known as the Moreno Valley Freeway until its terminus at its junction with Interstate 10. The freeway shares the alignment of the Orange Freeway, State Route 57 for some 2 miles (3.2 km) in Diamond Bar and also shares the alignment of Interstate 215 for about 5 miles (8.0 km) in Riverside.
Pomona Freeway
The Pomona Freeway is the assigned name Route 60 (SR 60) between its western terminus at the East Los Angeles Interchange complex and its junction with the Riverside Freeway, State Route 91 (SR 91) and Interstate 215 (I-215) in Riverside.
It 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.
Moreno Valley Freeway
The Moreno Valley Freeway is a freeway segment of State Route 60 and Interstate 215, connecting Riverside to communities further east in the Inland Empire and (via Interstate 10) to the Coachella Valley. Its western terminus is at the intersection of the Pomona (State Route 60) and Riverside Freeways (State Route 91 and Interstate 215), near downtown Riverside. The freeway is cosigned as State Route 60 and Interstate 215 for several miles in Riverside, traveling southeast, until the border between Riverside and Moreno Valley, where Interstate 215 branches southward as the Escondido Freeway, and State Route 60 (maintaining the Moreno Valley Freeway designation) branches eastward for approximately 20 miles (32 km). East of Moreno Valley, Route 60 technically loses its freeway status and becomes an expressway (because Caltrans has not yet found the money to close off all driveways and rebuild all at-grade intersections as grade-separated interchanges). After passing through Moreno Valley and the rugged hill country to the east (known as the Badlands to the locals), Route 60 ends at Interstate 10 in Beaumont.
As a result of the rapid development of the Inland Empire since the 1980s, the Moreno Valley Freeway now suffers from severe traffic congestion. The northwestern section that is concurrently signed with Interstate 215 recently underwent significant construction to improve traffic flow.
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.
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.
There is a project that will begin in November 2016 and will end in the middle of 2018 that will construct a partial interchange at Lemon Avenue.
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.
See also
- California Roads portal
- Interstate 10
- U.S. Route 60
- U.S. Route 70
- U.S. Route 99
References
External links
- California @ AARoads.com - State Route 60
- Caltrans: Route 60 highway conditions
- California Highways: Route 60
- The 60/91/215 Freeway Improvement Project
Source of the article : Wikipedia