Honk if you love the new, wider Los Osos Valley Road interchange

Here’s our review of the new and improved Los Osos Valley Road: It’s a little piece of highway heaven. Widening the infamous bottleneck between the Calle Joaquin intersection and South Higuera Street to four lanes has made a huge difference. But don’t take our word for it. Think back to when it took 37 minutes (it was probably only 11 minutes, but it seemed so much longer) to travel a few measly miles on LOVR. Well, we just made that same trip in three minutes! Tops! And we hit a red light!

Equally impressive: The massive, $24.5 million widening project was finished two months ahead of schedule, and in an El Niño year, no less.

Only drawback: Now that LOVR is fixed, we’re going to have to find another target for our traffic frustrations. But we won’t hold that against the hard-working LOVR road crew. We’ve got a flatbed pickup filled with road-worthy bouquets for all who had a hand in the transformation — a list that includes officials with the city of San Luis Obispo, Caltrans and the SLO Council of Governments, who partnered on the project, as well as the Granite Construction workers who made it happen.

One final note: The ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the project’s official completion is March 29. That’s a milestone worth celebrating.

This story was originally published March 10, 2016 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Honk if you love the new, wider Los Osos Valley Road interchange."