A Gnarly Record for the Orange Crush

Critics have described it as “nightmarish,” and “dreaded” has almost become part of its name. Commuters curse it. Now, the 1998 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records has given the notorious Orange Crush a new description: the most complex highway interchange in the world.

“It was really the number of routes,” said Russ Swan, editor of World Highways magazine, published in Nottingham, England, who helped choose the Crush. “It’s a matter of how many bits of string are going into this particular knot and how many bits of string are coming out of it.”

“It’s a great accomplishment,” Caltrans spokeswoman Maureena Duran-Rojas insisted.

The interchange, where the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways converge, providing 34 routes for 629,000 cars a day traveling in 66 lanes over 13 bridges, came to the attention of Guinness after Caltrans planner Judy Heyer and engineer David Tran submitted its name to World Highways, which was conducting a search for the world’s most complex highway interchange.

For some time, Swan said, Guinness has included the name of the most complex highway interchange in Great Britain, a place near Birmingham called Spaghetti Junction, which incorporates 18 routes on six levels together with a diverted canal and river. Six months ago, Swan said, Guinness editors asked for help locating the interchange holding the international record for complexity.

“We put a plea in the magazine calling for our readers to decide,” he said.

Four entries arrived.

From South Africa came word of the Jan Smuts Airport Interchange in Johannesburg. Constructed in the early 1970s, it connects two regional routes with three municipal ones and a rail line. A team in Tokyo submitted plans for Ukisima Junction, under construction near that city. And engineers in Boston sent news of the South Bay Interchange connecting two highways on six levels and offering 28 routes as part of the gargantuan Central Artery/Tunnel project.

The hands-down winner, however, came from Southern California, complete with a fact sheet, an aerial photo, a map and newspaper clips attesting to the Orange Crush’s undisputed complexity. “Once bashed by neighboring counties for spending too little on transportation,” Heyer and Tran bragged in the fact sheet, “Orange County is now the undisputed King of Road Construction.”

An $80-million overhaul of the Orange Crush was completed last year.

But one man’s miracle can be another man’s migraine.

“I don’t think that’s an award you’d want to be proud of,” offered Jack Groendal, a Lake Forest salesman who traverses the Orange Crush every day on his way to work. “The design is ridiculous--it’s like putting 10 drainpipes into one and wondering why the water doesn’t flow freely.”

Just what’s the significance of being designated the most complex highway interchange?

None at all, Swan concedes. “It’s entirely trivial. It’s not going to make any difference to anybody.”

Next up on the magazine’s schedule of earth-shattering contests: an international search for the world’s longest footbridge.