El Toro Y

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Intersection of I-5 and I-405 near Irvine, California

The El Toro "Y" is a freeway interchange in southern Orange County, California where the Santa Ana Freeway, Interstate 5, and the San Diego Freeway, Interstate 405 merge. South of that point, it retains the name "San Diego Freeway" but with the highway designation "Interstate 5." It is located in southeastern Irvine.

The "Y" is one of the busiest interchanges in the world; from 1975 to 2002, daily traffic surged from 102,000 to 356,000 vehicles a day.^[1] By the early 1990s it had also become one of the most congested, its severe overcrowding fed by a housing boom in southern Orange County.

In November 1990, Orange County voters approved Measure M, a half-cent increase in the county sales tax to finance transportation improvements. In 1993, the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) began a massive expansion project, adding a new interchange at Bake Parkway, new collector/distributor lanes, truck bypasses, and new carpool lanes and connectors. The $166-million project also vastly increased regular traffic lanes. After the project was completed in 1997, the El Toro Y stood as one of the widest roads in the world, at 26 traffic lanes wide.

The traffic delays at the interchange sparked the construction of several parallel bypass toll roads. The San Joaquin Hills Toll Road, designated California State Highway 73, opened in November 1996 and connects San Juan Capistrano and Costa Mesa. An extension to California State Highway 241, the Foothill Toll Road, is under development. It would bypass the El Toro Y to the east and connect to I-5 in northern San Diego County.

In the cleft of the Y lies the Irvine Spectrum Center, a huge shopping center, which includes a movie theater, a Dave and Buster's, and Spencer Gifts, Barnes and Noble, Robinsons May and Hot Topic, plus the color-changing obelisk, easily visible from the 5. The obelisk (non color-changing since November 2005) conceals a cell phone and television tower inside of it.