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L.A. roadblocks: Pet peeves of your commute, and one man's triumph over Caltrans
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You drive by them, through them, around them, despite them, and you say, “Why the hell did they build it that way?”
You know at least one of them: A poorly designed freeway interchange; an ill-conceived directional sign; a less-than-thorough thoroughfare; or a dangerous concrete "island" bearing black Pollock-streaks of the tires that have boldly gone where too many have gone before. They are the birth defects of a city quicker to pave than to plan, or plastic surgery for an aging infrastructure desperately trying to smooth out its concrete wrinkles. Mainly, they are freaks of structure poured into our streets and freeways, and they form the foundation of your personal driving nightmare.
If You Want Something Done...At All
Some of us, of course, dream that our government will use our tax dollars to correct these errors. Others turn dream into action, and fix it themselves. One such vigilante of commuter justice is artist Richard Ankrom. Ankrom could never accept the insufficient signage provided by Caltrans for drivers approaching the 5 North from the 110 North in downtown L.A. So he made his own:
He meticulously copied and crafted the missing signs to Caltrans standards, put on an orange vest and a hardhat, climbed up on the catwalk in broad daylight, and made what was wrong, right.
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It has been 8 years since Richard added his own 5 North signs over the Harbor Freeway @ 3rd street, and Caltrans has yet to take them down. For him, it's a work of public art and practicality -- function that follows form. For commuters, it's an expression of power where powerlessness reigns: stuck in traffic, betrayed by the car's promise of independence.
Drives of Quiet Desperation
Now not everybody can re-stripe or re-pave or re-build their daily route to make it ideal. But we all know what we WOULD do if we had the resources. Ankrom's Harbor Freeway sign leads me – almost literally – to the first of my Top 5 L.A. Roadblocks: The Exit from 110 North to North 5.
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