El Toro Y

El Toro "Y"
El Toro Interchange, The "Y"
Aerial view of the El Toro Y
Map
Location
Irvine, California
Coordinates33°38′41″N 117°44′07″W / 33.6446°N 117.7353°W / 33.6446; -117.7353
Roads at
junction
I-5
I-405
Construction
Maintained byCaltrans

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.

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]

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 exclusively for 22 minutes on June 17, 1994.[2]

  1. ^ Weikel, Dan (July 5, 2004). "The Road More Heavily Traveled". Los Angeles Times.
  2. ^ O.J.: Made in America, retrieved 2020-05-10. Episode 3, 00:27:47: "We're listening to the Los Angeles Police Department, and they believe that this vehicle is somewhere in the vicinity of the El Toro 'Y,' and I look down below and there's the El Toro 'Y.' And there's a white Bronco. Then there's a sheriff's unit, and then there's another sheriff's unit, and another sheriff's unit. We get the door open, and we get our very first shots, and I'm back on the two-way radio telling CBS 'You got to get us on the air; we found him!' And, with a flip of a switch, we were on with Dan Rather. We were on the air exclusively for 22 minutes..." - Zoey Tur