The Garden Grove Freeway is a freeway in southern Los Angeles County and northern Orange County, California. Running from Long Beach to Orange, it is one of the two principal east-west routes in Orange County (the other being the Riverside Freeway approximately eight miles to the north). It is signed as California State Route 22 along its entire length.
The route
7th Street in Long Beach widens from an expressway into the Garden Grove Freeway just before crossing the San Gabriel River (and with it, the Los Angeles/Orange county line). It then merges with the San Diego Freeway and runs concurrently with it for approximately five miles before the two routes diverge in eastern Seal Beach. Thereafter, the Garden Grove Freeway travels mostly within the city of Garden Grove or along its border with neighboring Westminster. Just inside the Orange city limits, the freeway enters the infamously congested Orange Crush interchange with the Santa Ana and Orange Freeways. It continues along the border of Orange and Santa Ana for three miles until terminating at the Costa Mesa Freeway.
Opened in the mid-1960s, the Garden Grove Freeway had the distinction of being one of the only freeways in Southern California to never have been widened from its original alignment. This resulted in its suffering from severe rush hour congestion, particularly as Santa Ana's population surged to nearly half a million during the 1990s. In late 2004, OCTA began a widening project that would add one mixed-flow and one high occupancy vehicle lane to the route in each direction, as well as updating onramps and offramps to contemporary standards.
Communities along the route
Communities along the Garden Grove Freeway's route include:
- Long Beach
- Seal Beach
- Garden Grove
- Westminster
- Orange
- Santa Ana
Freeways intersected
Freeways intersected by the Garden Grove Freeway include:
Last updated: 08-01-2005 04:15:56
