Driving in California is always an adventure, in Los Angeles, the sport of driving has been elevated to an art earn. Like qualifying for the Indy 500 pole situation, you never know who you will be sharing the road with. Some drivers are on their cell phones arguing with their agents, boyfriends or psychiatrists. Others are putting on makeup for that gargantuan audition, or suffering from either caffeine overdoses or withdrawal symptoms. Some days it takes a modern mix of passive aggression, infuriate management and an inner connection with your auto insurance agent to do it safely across our great freeway expanses.
On a novel drive, we found ourselves traveling north on the Interstate 405 freeway through the treacherous Sepulveda Pass down into the San Fernando Valley. That's why I'm calling this shrimp essay Descent Into Madness. Interstate 405, or the San Diego Freeway is the major north / south artery connecting LA's San Fernando Valley with the West Side of Los Angeles. U.S. 101, or the Ventura Freeway runs east and west along the southern allotment of The Valley, and connects Los Angeles with Ventura County in the north. These two arteries intersect at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains range in a tangle of concrete called the 101 / 405 Interchange. This interchange is rated #1 on the list of America's 24 Worst Highway Bottlenecks.
To detestable The Pass in the ragged days you needed to employ a dirt road called Sepulveda Boulevard. At the top of the mountains it ducked into an art deco tunnel under Mulholland Highway. Today the best route is the 405 Freeway which blasted its arrangement through the rocky mountain pass and now flows over the top of the Santa Monica Mountain range, down towards U.S. Route 101. Mulholland crosses over the 405 on a expansive steel bridge flying across the freeway.
Under optimum conditions, it is a risky fraction of highway. It has six lanes of cracked and patched asphalt with only painted white lines and Bott's Dots separating you from your fellow drivers. California is attempting a massive improvement project at the 101 / 405 Interchange which impartial adds to the challenge by turning it into a grand obstacle course. Ominous steel cranes loom over the freeway with distracting signs and construction equipment littering the sides of the road.
The slope on this dinky stretch of highway is steep, so that honest adds to the speeding, careening and screeching. Drivers on the proper are frequently stopped or slowing as cars cram into lanes for the Ventura freeway exits. Drivers on the left are usually speeding up in the thinning traffic as they continue north on the 405 through the Valley. If everyone stayed in their lanes the procedure unbiased might work. Unfortunately that isn't the case.
Cars carve across lanes of traffic because they are going to miss the 101 turn-off lane. Drivers also slam on their breaks when they realize how steep the grade is and their SUV is picking up too remarkable speed; "fill the phone honey, I gotta drive". Irritated drivers in the proper hand lanes are sick of everyone cutting in line, so they won't let you in. There is a lot of sudden braking and jockeying for set, reminiscent of the Indy 500 on the final laps. The middle lane becomes sort of a no-man's land of crisscrossing cars, like a risky ballet of flying steel with flying cell phones and recede mugs.
Until the highway improvements are finished, this interchange raises the thrill level for driving in Los Angeles to an art create.descend by http://www.AngelCityArt.com to survey photos. And don't forget to buckle up and in the words of the immortal traffic guru and punster Bill Keene; "Be alert and you won't obtain wound".
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