Congestion to Make a Commuter Proud

It probably won’t come as news to the beleaguered commuters who drive the routes daily, but Caltrans made it official on Tuesday: Two of the busiest freeway interchanges in the nation are in Orange County.

Seventh on the national congestion honor roll is the county’s chaotic freeway nerve center--the interchange of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways in Orange. A plucky 441,000 vehicles squeeze through daily.

Ninth busiest in the nation is the intersection of the Orange and Riverside freeways in Anaheim, traversed daily by 421,000 vehicles.

Busiest in the United States? It’s the West Los Angeles junction of the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways, crossed by a daily average of 513,000 vehicles.

Trailing close behind are the East Los Angeles interchange of the Santa Monica, Golden State, Pomona and Hollywood freeways, with 509,000 vehicles, and the Santa Monica’s interchange with the Harbor Freeway in central Los Angeles, with 502,500.

In fact, the nine busiest superhighway interchanges in the nation are in California, with eight of them in Southern California, the state Department of Transportation said.

Others in the top 10 nationwide include:

4. The Ventura and San Diego freeways in Sherman Oaks, with 480,000.

5. The Eastshore, MacArthur and Nimitz freeways in Alameda County, with 455,500.

6. The Harbor and San Diego freeways in Carson, 444,000.

8. The Artesia and San Gabriel River freeways in Cerritos, 425,500.

10. Interstate 55 and Interstate 94 in Chicago, 419,639.

The Santa Monica Freeway is California’s most traveled highway, averaging about 315,000 vehicles a day, according to Chuck Pivetti, chief of the state’s Office of Highway Engineering. That’s about 218 cars a minute, 24 hours a day.

By way of contrast, he singled out California 270, which serves the Central Sierra ghost town of Bodie. It carries an average of 350 vehicles a day, or about one car every four minutes.