The Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the Pasadena Freeway, is one of the oldest freeways in the United States. It connects Los Angeles with Pasadena alongside the Arroyo Seco seasonal river. Mostly opened in 1940, it represents the transitional phase between early parkways and later freeways. It conformed to modern standards when it was built, but is now regarded as a narrow, outdated roadway.* A 1953 extension brought the south end to the Four Level Interchange in downtown Los Angeles and a connection with the rest of the freeway system.
The road remains largely as it was on opening day, though the plants in its median have given way to a steel guard rail, and most recently to concrete barriers, and it now carries the designation State Route 110, not historic U.S. Route 66. Between 1954 and 2010, it was designated the Pasadena Freeway. In 2010, as part of plans to revitalize its scenic value and improve safety, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) restored the roadway's original name. All of its original bridges remain, including four that predate the parkway itself, built across the Arroyo Seco before the 1930s. The road has a crash rate roughly twice the rate of other freeways, largely due to an outdated design lacking in acceleration and deceleration lanes.
The Arroyo Seco Parkway is designated a State Scenic Highway, National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and National Scenic Byway. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
Route description
The six-lane Arroyo Seco Parkway (part of State Route 110) begins at the Four Level Interchange, a symmetrical stack interchange on the north side of downtown Los Angeles that connects the Pasadena (SR 110 north), Harbor (SR 110 south), Hollywood (US 101 north), and Santa Ana (US 101 south) Freeways. The first interchange is with the north end of Figueroa Street at Alpine Street, and the freeway then meets the north end of Hill Street at a complicated junction that provides access to Dodger Stadium. Beyond Hill Street, SR 110 temporarily widens to four northbound and five southbound lanes as it enters the hilly Elysian Park, where the northbound lanes pass through the four Figueroa Street Tunnels and the higher southbound lanes pass through a cut and over low areas on bridges. One interchange, with Solano Avenue and Amador Street, is located between the first and second tunnels. Just beyond the last tunnel is a northbound left exit and corresponding southbound right entrance for Riverside Drive and the northbound Golden State Freeway (I-5). Immediately after those ramps, the Arroyo Seco Parkway crosses a pair of three-lane bridges over the Los Angeles River just northwest of its confluence with the Arroyo Seco, one rail line on each bank, and Avenue 19 and San Fernando Road on the north bank. A single onramp from San Fernando Road joins SR 110 northbound as it passes under I-5, and a northbound left exit and southbound right entrance connect to the north segment of Figueroa Street. Here the original 1940 freeway, mostly built along the west bank of the Arroyo Seco, begins as the southbound lanes curve from their 1943 alignment over the Los Angeles River into the original alignment next to the northbound lanes.
As the original freeway begins, it passes under an extension to the 1925 Avenue 26 Bridge, one of four bridges over the Arroyo Seco that predate the parkway's construction. A southbound exit and northbound entrance at Avenue 26 complement the Figueroa Street ramps, and similar ramps connect Pasadena to both directions of I-5. SR 110 continues northeast alongside the Arroyo Seco, passing under the A Line light rail and Pasadena Avenue before junctioning Avenue 43 at the first of many folded diamond interchanges that feature extremely tight (right-in/right-out) curves on the exit and entrance ramps. The next interchange, at Avenue 52, is a normal diamond interchange, and soon after is Via Marisol, where the northbound side has standard diamond ramps, but on the southbound side Avenue 57 acts as a folded diamond connection. The 1926 Avenue 60 Bridge is the second original bridge, and is another folded diamond, with southbound traffic using Shults and Benner Streets to connect. The 1895 Santa Fe Arroyo Seco Railroad Bridge (now A Line) lies just beyond, and after that is a half diamond interchange at Marmion Way/Avenue 64 with access towards Los Angeles only. After the freeway passes under the 1912 York Boulevard Bridge, the pre-parkway bridge, southbound connections between the freeway and cross street can be made via Salonica Street. As the Arroyo Seco curves north to pass west of downtown Pasadena, the Arroyo Seco Parkway instead curves east, crossing the stream into South Pasadena. A single northbound offramp on the Los Angeles side of the bridge curves left under the bridge to Bridewell Street, the parkway's west-side frontage road.
As they enter South Pasadena, northbound motorists can see a "City of South Pasadena" sign constructed, in the late 1930s, of stones from the creek bed embedded in a hillside.. This final segment of the Arroyo Seco Parkway heads east in a cut alongside Grevelia Street, with a full diamond at Orange Grove Avenue and a half diamond at Fair Oaks Avenue. In between those two streets it crosses under the A Line for the third and final time. Beyond Fair Oaks Avenue, SR 110 curves north around the east side of Raymond Hill and enters Pasadena, where the final ramp, a southbound exit, connects to State Street for access to Fair Oaks Avenue. The freeway, and state maintenance, ends at the intersection with Glenarm Street, but the six- and four-lane Arroyo Parkway, now maintained by the city of Pasadena, continues north as a surface road to Colorado Boulevard (historic U.S. Route 66) and beyond to Holly Street near the Memorial Park A Line station.
Route usage
According to Caltrans in 2016, the average annual daily traffic (AADT) on the Arroyo Seco Parkway was 78,000 car trips at Orange Grove Blvd, 100,000 car trips at Ave 64, and 123,000 car trips at Ave 43.
History
Planning
The Arroyo Seco (Spanish: "dry creek, dry gulch, or streambed") is an intermittent stream that carries rainfall from the San Gabriel Mountains southerly through western Pasadena into the Los Angeles River near downtown Los Angeles. During the dry season, it served as a faster wagon connection between the two cities than the all-weather road on the present Huntington Drive..
The first known survey for a permanent roadway through the Arroyo was made by T. D. Allen of Pasadena in 1895, and in 1897 two more proposals were made, one for a scenic parkway and the other for a commuter cycleway. The latter was partially constructed and opened by Horace Dobbins, who incorporated the California Cycleway Company and bought a six-mile (10 km) right-of-way from downtown Pasadena to Avenue 54 in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Construction began in 1899, and about of the elevated wooden bikeway were opened on January 1, 1900, starting near Pasadena's Hotel Green and ending near the Raymond Hotel. The majority of its route is now Edmondson Alley; a toll booth was located near the north end, in the present Central Park. Due to the end of the bicycle craze of the 1890s and the existing Pacific Electric Railway lines connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, the cycleway did not and was not expected to turn a profit, and never extended beyond the Raymond Hotel into the Arroyo Seco. Sometime before 1910, the structure was dismantled, and the wood sold for lumber, and the Pasadena Rapid Transit Company, a failed venture headed by Dobbins to construct a streetcar line, acquired the right-of-way..
Due to the rise of the automobile, most subsequent plans for the Arroyo Seco included a roadway, though they differed as to the purpose: some, influenced by the City Beautiful movement, concentrated on the park, while others, particularly those backed by the Automobile Club of Southern California (ACSC), had as their primary purpose a fast road connecting the two cities. The first plan that left the Arroyo Seco in South Pasadena to better serve downtown Pasadena was drawn up by Pasadena City Engineer Harvey W. Hincks in 1916 and supported by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce and ACSC. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Harland Bartholomew's 1924 Major Street Traffic Plan for Los Angeles, while concentrating on traffic relief, and noting that the Arroyo Seco Parkway would be a major highway, suggested that it be built as a parkway, giving motorists "a great deal of incidental recreation and pleasure". By the mid-1930s, plans for a primarily recreational parkway had been overshadowed by the need to carry large numbers of commuters..
Debates continued on the exact location of the parkway, in particular whether it would bypass downtown Pasadena. In the late 1920s, Los Angeles acquired properties between San Fernando Road and Pasadena Avenue, and City Engineer Lloyd Aldrich began grading between Avenues 60 and 66 in the early 1930s. By June 1932, residents of Highland Park and Garvanza, who had paid special assessments to finance improvement of the park, became suspicious of what appeared to be a road, then graded along the Arroyo Seco's west side between Via Marisol (then Hermon Avenue) and Princess Drive. Merchants on North Figueroa Street (then Pasadena Avenue) also objected, due to the loss of business they would suffer from a bypass. Work stopped while the interested parties could work out the details, although, in late 1932 and early 1933, Aldrich was authorized to grade a cheaper route along the east side between Avenue 35 and Hermon Avenue. To the north, Pasadena and South Pasadena endorsed in 1934 what was largely Hincks's 1916 plan, but lacked the money to build it. A bill was introduced in 1935 to add the route to the state highway system, and after some debate a new Route 205 was created as a swap for the Palmdale-Wrightwood Route 186, "A new route or portion of route is hereby added to the State highway system from Route 165 [Figueroa Street] near Los Angeles River in Los Angeles to Route 161 [Colorado Boulevard] in Pasadena at Broadway Avenue." "Route 205 is from Route 165 near Los Angeles River in Los Angeles to Route 161 in Pasadena at Broadway Avenue." as the legislature had just greatly expanded the system in 1933, and the California Highway Commission opposed a further increase..
Construction
To connect the proposed parkway with downtown Los Angeles, that city improved and extended North Figueroa Street as a four-lane road to the Los Angeles River, allowing drivers to bypass the congested North Broadway Bridge on the existing but underutilized Riverside Drive Bridge. A large part of the project lay within Elysian Park, and four Art Deco tunnels were built through the hills. The first three, between Solano Avenue and the river, opened in late 1931, and the fourth opened in mid-1936, completing the extension of Figueroa Street to Riverside Drive. As with the contemporary Ramona Boulevard east from downtown, grade separations were mostly built only where terrain dictated. For Figueroa Street, this meant that all crossings except College Street (built several years after the extension was completed), where a hill was cut through, were at grade. The Figueroa Street Viaduct, connecting the Riverside Drive intersection with North Figueroa Street (then Dayton Avenue) across the Los Angeles River, opened in mid-1937. Closer to downtown, an interchange was built at Temple Street in 1939..