If you live in SoCal you know about CA state route 91...and the demonic bottleneck between Anaheim Hills and Corona. Yes, yes...it is one of those LA freeways..but what makes this particularly worse is that CA SR 91 handles the bulk load of residents out in the suburbs of Riverside County (cuz they want a cheap and fancy house) who work in LA/OC. The main problem?...it goes through a pass..a narrow pass which means of course...narrowing the freeway and thus of course..taking a few lanes with it. There have been a number of ways to try to solve it. Proposals have included double decking the highway for that stretch of 5 miles...of course that would make it "ugly" and cost a lot. Another plan?...to build a small toll highway through the Santa Ana mountains to the south with a nice tunnel. Of course that would be a very nice suggestion...except when the environmentalists scream about it and when the "all-powerful" Irvine Company (that controls practically a 1/3 of Orange County) fears that it will disrupt their carefully planned and conceived city. Then there are the calls to make SR 74, a winding road between the South part of the OC on the I-5 to the south part of Riverside county on the I-15, into a highway. But of course..NIMBYism in posh south OC and the environmentalists win again. So of course...we're back to CA SR 91...a parking lot of cars virtually from 7AM in the morning to 8PM at night...taking a lot more money from CalTrans because of the constant need of maintainence...which could have been, of course, been used to fix the mess, but no.
