Regional Access

The regional transportation system includes freeways, highways, and major thoroughfares that provide city residents and the business community with access to all areas of Los Angeles County and beyond. Monterey Park benefits from ready access to three major freeways: Interstate 10 (San Bernardino freeway), Interstate 710 (Long Beach freeway), and State Route 60 (Pomona freeway). City residents can use the freeway network to drive to any destination in the Southland quickly and easily, traffic permitting.

Monterey Park's Circulation Plan, illustrated in Figure C-2 (PDF), includes these three freeways and the ramp systems that directly affect city streets.

Addressing Freeway Impacts

Both Interstate 10 and State Route 60 are east and west freeways that feed into downtown Los Angeles, and both freeways experience heavy peak hour usage.

• The evening commute contains frustrated motorists often exit at I-10 in Monterey Park at Fremont Avenue, Atlantic Boulevard, Garfield Avenue, and New Avenue to use surface streets. Garvey Avenue represents a popular east-west alternative for commuters through Monterey Park.
• The traffic congestion on Garvey Avenue can create Level of Service F conditions at many intersections, hindering the ability of residents to easily drive between home and the restaurants, shops, and other destinations in the downtown area.

Pomona Freeway

The Pomona Freeway interchanges with Atlantic Boulevard, Findlay Avenue, Garfield Avenue, and Potrero Grande Drive in the city, and the Paramount Boulevard ramps in Montebello also provide access to the southeast corner of Monterey Park. Because the local Monterey Park street network does not offer any good alternative east-west surface street, vehicles on the freeway typically do not create adverse spill-over effects. However, Atlantic Boulevard experiences peak-hour congestion at the freeway ramps.

Interstate 710

Interstate 710 represents a controversial and thorny component of the regional system. Planned by the state to continue from Long Beach north to Interstate 210 in Pasadena, I-710 terminates approximately one mile north of the San Bernardino freeway, at Valley Boulevard in Alhambra.

Since the 1980s, the city of South Pasadena and other interested parties have vigorously opposed I-710 completion. Jurisdictions that suffer the effects of an incomplete freeway system, Monterey Park among them, work earnestly toward overcoming the obstacles that delay the completion of the route through to I-210. As this final link is seen as critical to relieving both local and regional congestion, Monterey Park will continue to push for its completion.