The El Toro "Y" is a freeway interchange in Irvine, California where the Santa Ana Freeway, Interstate 5 (I-5), and the San Diego Freeway (at that point the I-405) merge. South of the El Toro Y, the highway is named the "San Diego Freeway" with the highway designation "I-5." Located in south Orange County, the interchange was named after the nearby city El Toro (now Lake Forest), and the now-closed Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, located northeast of the interchange.
Principally, it can be seen as splitting northbound traffic from south Orange County and San Diego County into the Los Angeles area's two major north–south routes: I-5, which heads through the center of Orange County towards Downtown Los Angeles, and I-405, which serves the area's western parts. 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.
The "Y" was where American broadcast reporter Zoey Tur of KCBS-TV, via news helicopter, first located and broadcast O.J. Simpson's white Ford Bronco slow-speed police chase northbound exclusively for 22 minutes on June 17, 1994. In the cleft of the "Y" lies the Irvine Spectrum Center.
History
By the early 1990s, the El Toro Y had become one of the most congested freeway interchanges in the world, 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 and collector/distributor roads at Bake Parkway (signed as truck bypass lanes) and Lake Forest Drive, and carpool lanes and connectors. The $166-million project also vastly increased regular traffic lanes. The project increased the number of vehicles per day from 300,000 to 400,000.
The Irvine Spectrum Center, a large shopping center featuring a movie theater, numerous shopping destinations and a large obelisk, which conceals a cell phone and television tower inside of it, is in the cleft of the Y.
On July 29, 2008, a moderate earthquake centered in Chino Hills caused damage to an expansion joint on one of the overpasses in the interchange. Caltrans closed the 5 Southbound Truck Bypass/Bake Parkway/Lake Forest exit to replace the expansion joint that was damaged during the quake.
In popular culture
The El Toro Y was referenced the 2011 episode "Angry Dad: the Movie" of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, when Bart gives Homer a list of "Must-See Attractions" in Los Angeles.
In the third episode of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, it was initially reported that O. J. Simpson was spotted in Al Cowlings's Ford Bronco on Interstate 405 at Irvine Center Drive at the El Toro Y. However, the scenes were shot elsewhere in Los Angeles.