Let Us Drive the Ballona Freeway!
If you've ever driven on the Marina Freeway, you've found that -- like a really great vacation -- it feels like it's over before it began.
"The 90,'' the Marina Freeway, can't be more than a couple of miles long, a stub that leads you off the San Diego Freeway and dumps you near, as the name promises, Marina del Rey.
The 90 is no stranger to name changes. It was known for about 15 minutes as the Richard M. Nixon Freeway, a name that, for obvious reasons, was quietly removed.
So it's time to change it again -- for good, and for good reason.
I thought about this as I was driving the Marina Freeway after Tuesday's ''Celebrate Ballona'' awards dinner. It honored some public officials as well as several of my journalistic colleagues and me for what we had done and written and said about the remarkable Ballona wetlands, the 600 or so acres of surviving coastal wetlands which are owned by the state and, Deo volente, eternally protected from development.
''The Marina Freeway'' isn't much of an improvement on ''the Richard M. Nixon Freeway.'' Instead of giving the freeway the name of a manmade feature -- the marina of Marina del Rey -- let's name it instead after something that's a reminder of California's vanishing natural beauty: that rare and radiant fragment of landscape that shows us what coastal Southern California once was like.
Let's call it the Ballona Freeway.
Commuters and tourists alike who will never see the wetlands will at least see the freeway signs, and ask some questions, and find out what they mean. And who knows? Some people might get curious enough about the name to decide to check the place out.
Who's with me on this? Mayor Villaraigosa? Councilman Rosendahl? Speaker Bass? I may just keep after all of you until this one happens. Will someone start making up those ''Greenlight the Ballona Freeway!'' buttons? With the presidential election over and done with, there's plenty of available space on people's lapels for some new causes.
I think freeways should be named after important local citizens, after they die.
Thus, the "Los Angeles Times Freeway" is certainly appropriate.
And I write this with great sadness.
Posted by: Hans Laetz | December 03, 2008 at 08:44 AM
Well, as someone who monitors all name changes on freeways, it's not that hard to get a name change: you get an assembly or senate resolution, and raise the number for the signs.
But I really don't see the benefit. Usually it is referred to as Route 90 -- freeways are now less called by names as our assemblycritters have named more and more small segments.
The Marina Freeway name goes back to the days when the CTC named freeways based on their ultimate direction... and Route 90 was to be a continuous route between Yorba Linda (hence Richard M Nixon) and the Marina.
As always, more information can be found under Route 90 at www.cahighways.org.
Posted by: Cahwyguy - Daniel | December 03, 2008 at 10:30 AM
I personally think the Nixon Freeway made sense as the freeway goes nowhere.
Posted by: PierreSD | December 03, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Good on you, Patt. It is SO unique and astonishiing that 600 acres of land has been left open in Los Angeles that naming Route 90 the Ballona Freeway would be permanent testament to a dying phenomenon in Los Angeles: living, breathing open space.
Posted by: Rose MacHardy | December 04, 2008 at 08:45 AM
Wow. What a wonderful idea! Maybe that would prevent Caltrans from paving over more of the historical wetlands - which they are planning in some mobile units under the bridge at the end of the freeway. Just to the west of their temporary buildings are lush wetlands - probably 15 or 20 acres.....that, the garden nursery and the boat storage would be wiped out for a little longer freeway. Maybe the Ballona Freeway name change would bring the right sprit in to the area to stop the folly of such plans.
Posted by: Marcia Hanscom | December 04, 2008 at 05:03 PM