Stupid highway design

Living in Southern California for the last 20 years, I've gotten pretty used to the roads, and it was helpful when a couple of toll roads were put in to bypass some of the particularly bad traffic on the the freeway.

These roads have far more limited access than the usual highway, so it seems inconceivable that these two connected thoroughfares could have three exits with the same name, but that's exactly what happened: there are three exits for Portola within about eight miles of each other.

I don't know about everybody else, but it took me a long time to really remember the difference between the similarly-named 241 and 261 tollways, and in a kind of perfect storm, I used to live near the 241 Portola and had to routinely visit a place off the southernmost 261 Portola.

I just can't imagine how many people have gotten lost due to this poor design (which inevitably leads to imprecise directions), and it's hard to believe that there couldn't have been a way to remove at least one of them (for instance, putting an exit at Bake instead of the southernmost Portola would have been helpful).

If there's a good reason for this, I'd sure love to know it.

Note: this is not a recent development, but it's just taken me a while to get around to writing about it.

Comments

[Jeffrey Friedl]

I think you're confusing "exit name" with the names of places that an exit can lead you. 261 has an exit labeled "Portola Pkwy" because it leads you to Portola Parkway.

Both of 241's exits lead to Portola Parkway, but only the southernmost is so marked... the northern one is marked 'Portola - IRVINE".

It would be nice if they picked random names, like "Exit Bob", that were unique. But even if they tried, they're still the government, and would end up coming up with names like "Exit Jeff" and "Exit Geoff" /-:

[Grandma Friedl]

Well, I for one had a bad experience taking the wrong Portola exit, then being told that I couldn't have gotten off on the wrong one because there really wasn't one where I had gotten off. I checked later and it was there all right; I had just been on the wrong Freeway. And to make it worse, both freeways sounded familiar because here in Northeast Ohio where the Friedl's are all from, there are two hiways near each other called 241 and 261. I agree with Steve..they certainly could be more clearly marked.