Beverly Hills Freeway

The Beverly Hills Freeway was the name for a never-built freeway intended to link the Los Angeles districts of Westwood and Echo Park along the route of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was to have taken the designation of State Route 2, [http://www.cahighways.org/001-008.html#002 State Route 2 from cahighways.org,] combining with the Glendale Freeway to provide a direct freeway link between the Foothill (I-210) and San Diego (I-405) freeways. This segment of SR 2 actually was originally intended to be the "Santa Monica Freeway," as it would have followed the alignment of, or completely replaced, Santa Monica Boulevard. Delays in its construction resulted in that name going to Interstate 10, which was originally known as the "Olympic Freeway."

In the 1960s, the city of Beverly Hills had begun a transition from a quasi-exurban retreat for the entertainment industry to its current status as one of the world's premier shopping and culinary destinations. Building a freeway along Santa Monica Boulevard, the northwestern border of the city's emergent "Golden Triangle" shopping district, did not fit into city fathers' vision for Beverly Hills' development. Moreover, it was feared that a freeway would exacerbate the already evident divisions between the fabulously wealthy residents of the hilly areas north of Santa Monica Boulevard and the merely affluent ones to the south. A proposed cut-and-cover tunnel for the freeway failed to generate sufficient political support, and by the mid-1970s the project was essentially dead.

California State Senator (later Congressman) Anthony Beilenson was one of the leading opponents of the project.

Caltrans' decision not to build the freeway was both harmful and beneficial to the areas along its proposed route. The massive Century City high-rise commercial development just west of the Beverly Hills city limits was built with freeway access in mind. For many Century City workers who live in Los Angeles' eastern suburbs, the quickest way home takes them through the residential district of Cheviot Hills, which has caused consternation among its well-heeled residents. For Beverly Hills, the decision helped preserve much of its emergent downtown, but at the cost of creating gridlock on Wilshire Boulevard and I-10.

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