SR-55 Background and History

Built in 1931, State Route 55 was once called Route 43 and started at Highway 1 in Newport Beach. From Newport Beach it followed the path of SR-55-through Newport, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Orange and Anaheim, and continued eastward on what is now SR-91 into Riverside County to link with Route 215. In 1959, it received its official designation as State Route 55 and became the Newport Freeway.

As the only North-South corridor traversing Orange County, it quickly became an important gateway to shopping and recreation along the coast. But by 1999--the year that construction began on the latest project--there were 264,000 average daily trips on the SR-55.

To date, the SR-55 has been put through a three-year facelift, at a total cost of $118 million. Now there is a continuous high-occupancy vehicle (HOV), or carpool, lane that links commuters with HOV lanes on the SR-91, the I-5, and (soon) the I-405. In most places, these HOV lanes are barrier-divided from the rest of the highway, and have their own separate onramps and offramps, connecting to HOV lanes on other highways and surface streets.