California State Route 480
former state highway in San Francisco, California, United States
State Route 480 (SR 480) was a state highway in San Francisco, California, United States, consisting of the elevated double-decker Embarcadero Freeway (also known as the Embarcadero Skyway), the partly elevated Doyle Drive approach to the Golden Gate Bridge and the proposed and unbuilt section in between. The unbuilt section from Doyle Drive to Van Ness Avenue was to have been called the Golden Gate Freeway and the Embarcadero Freeway as originally planned would have extended from Van Ness along the north side of Bay Street and then along the Embarcadero to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The Embarcadero Freeway, which had only been constructed from Broadway along the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge, was demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and Doyle Drive was then part of U.S. Route 101, until being replaced in 2015 by the Presidio Parkway. SR 480 was Interstate 480 (I-480), an auxiliary route of the Interstate Highway System, from 1955 to 1965, and signed as the state route from 1968 onwards. The entire route was removed in 1991, about two years after the earthquake.
History
Legislative Route 224 (LR 224) was defined in 1947 to connect U.S. Route 101 (US 101, pre-1964 Legislative Route 2) at the intersection of Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue with US 40 and US 50 (pre-1964 Legislative Route 68) at the west end of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge (near the Transbay Terminal). Its alignment was roughly along Lombard Street and the Embarcadero.
LR 224, as well as Route 2 (US 101) from Route 224 west to the junction with SR 1 near the Golden Gate Bridge, was added to the Interstate Highway System on September 15, 1955. This included the 1936 Doyle Drive structure, an early freeway built to access the Golden Gate Bridge. After some discussion, the I-480 number was assigned on November 10, 1958.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “California State Route 480” is former state highway in San Francisco, California, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through California, State and Route, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “former state highway in San Francisco, California, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q757971. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 2015, 1955 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “California State Route 480” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.