California State Route 82
state highway in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California, United States
State Route 82 (SR 82) is a state highway in the U.S. state of California that runs from Interstate 880 (I-880) in San Jose to I-280 in San Francisco following the San Francisco Peninsula. It is the spinal arterial road of the peninsula and runs parallel to the nearby Caltrain line along much of the route. For much of its length, the highway is named El Camino Real and formed part of the historic El Camino Real mission trail. The present-day routing became part of U.S. Route 101 (US 101) in 1926 before the completion of the Bayshore Freeway in 1937. The state then switched the US 101 and "Bypass (BYP) US 101" designations back and forth between El Camino Real and the Bayshore Freeway before deciding in 1964 to instead designate El Camino Real as SR 82.
SR 82 passes through and near the historic downtowns of many Peninsula cities, including Burlingame, San Mateo, Redwood City, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, and through some of the most walkable and transit-oriented neighborhoods in the region.
Though signs and maps may continue to mark SR 82 as running further south from I-280 to US 101 in South San Jose, control of this segment of the highway was relinquished to the city in 2013 and is thus no longer officially part of the state highway system.
Route description
Route 82 is defined in section 382, subdivision (a), of the California Streets and Highways Code, and that the highway is "from Route 880 in San Jose to Route 280 in San Francisco". Control of the former southern segment of US 101 in San Jose was relinquished by the state to the city, and subdivision (b) further mandates that the city must still "maintain within its jurisdiction signs directing motorists to the continuation of Route 82", and the segment is still eligible to be considered as a state business route.
At its south end SR 82 starts as The Alameda at I-880 in San Jose.
The public source identifies “California State Route 82” as state highway in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around California, State and Route.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q757967. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1937, 1964 and 2013.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “California State Route 82” 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.