1958 Greater Los Angeles Freeway Plan
LA's freeway system is famous for better or worse, but there are lots of misconceptions about it:
LA, with the exception of the San Fernando Valley, is not, as is condescendingly claimed, a city "built around the automobile", its suburbs are, but it predominantly grew up in the streetcar era, which you will quickly see if you take a quick drive through the residential areas of Central, with their narrow lots and backyard garages. LA really straddles an uncomfortable line between dense older cities like Chicago and sprawling newer ones like Houston. In fact, when the Regional Planning Commission issued its seminal report in 1943, they mourned LA's underdeveloped road network compared to
Chicago and New York.
LA's freeway network isn't as massive as you think. The metro area is near the bottom for freeway miles per capita, behind
Boston and Washington DC.
But there was a time when the city was planning for much much more. In 1958, there were plans for 1500 miles for Los Angeles, Ventura, and Orange Counties. No part of LA County would've been more than 4 miles from a freeway. In the end, only 60% of it got built, and if all of it did, LA would still not be in the top 10 for freeway miles per capita.
I can't go through all the unbuilt freeways, but there are some notable ones:
The Beverly Hills freeway would've gone along Santa Monica Boulevard, for this reason, earlier planning documents confusingly call it the Santa Monica Freeway while I-10 was called the Olympic Freeway after Olympic Avenue. It was cancelled because rich people get what they want, which was bad news for Century City commuters, as the development was planned with freeway access in mind. Oddly enough, Governor Ronald Reagan, who you'd assume would be sympathetic to the plight of the rich, kept it alive as long as he could, all the better to repay the campaign donations of Century City's developers, vetoing 3 bills that would've killed it. Not until Jerry Brown came along was a fork finally stuck in it.
The Laurel Canyon freeway would've gone along Laurel Canyon and then La Cienga Boulevard. It was cancelled for the same reason, except for a small section that travels through the Inglewood Oilfields, causing the world famous traffic jams on the 405.
The Slauson Freeway became the Richard Nixon Freeway then, after Watergate, the Marina Freeway. It would've gone along Slauson Avenue. Only a short spur near Marina Del Ray and another one near Yorba Linda (Nixon's birthplace) was built. The problem with this route was cost, according to the
New York Times.
Cost was also the likely reason for the scrapping of the Whitnall Freeway, which would've been a North-South route parallel to the Laurel Canyon Freeway before turning to an East-West route in the San Fernando Valley. It was named after LA planner Gordon Whitnall and construction had started in 1927 before suddenly being cancelled due to the depression and then later revived in the 50s. The right of way had already been cleared when the plug was pulled in 1975.
The 103, or Industrial Freeway, would've spanned all the way through downtown and Chinatown before terminating at the 110.
The Pacific Coast Highway would've become the Pacific Coast Freeway with part of it going on an
offshore causeway by Santa Monica. There were one or two problems with this: it would've required 97 million cubic yards of the Santa Monica mountains be carved out for the landfill (although that would've made more space for housing), tidal forces would've required constant dredging to prevent silting, and obviously, residents were not pleased with the potential loss of their oceanfront views. Governor Pat Brown vetoed a bill funding the causeway in 1965, killing it. The rest of the route didn't fare much better. Long Beach residents were furious about the impact it would have on their city's downtown and the mayors of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach got into a fistfight. It was officially removed from the plan in 1967.
The Century Freeway, the last new freeway in Los Angeles, and probably the last freeway of its type in the country, was planned to go all the way to San Bernadino. From a social justice perspective, the Century would wind up being arguably the least problematic freeway ever to be forced through a densely populated urban area. That's because Judge Harry Pregerson, in a consent decree, forced Caltrans to go to some impressive lengths to compensate for the disruption it caused. So it had noise barriers, carpool lanes, light rail running through the median, and he forced them to build new housing for those displaced and to hire workers from the neighborhoods it was to tear through. For that, the interchange with I-110 was named in his honor.
Route 23 was going to be turned into the Decker Freeway. The difficulty of the terrain doomed it, and probably the Topanga, Malibu, and Reseda Freeways.
Mulholland Drive was going to become the Mulholland Scenic Parkway, with 6 lanes of traffic.
