Later, after the speeding bus is escorted by the police on surface streets, Sandra is forced
to make a very sharp right turn with the bus (onto a freeway onramp), without being
able to slow down below 50 MPH. To prevent the bus from flipping over, Keanu has
the passengers all move to one side of the bus.

Those police escort scenes were shot in the West Athens/Willowbrook area of
South Los Angeles, just northwest of the junction of the Harbor (110) Freeway and
the Century (105) Freeway. In the photos above and below, the bus is heading south
down S. Broadway, a street which runs parallel to the Harbor Freeway.  *

The hard right turn scene itself (below) wasn't really shot on a freeway onramp.
The scene of the bus making the turn was actually shot on a surface street.

If you're traveling south down S. Broadway, just after you pass 112th Street, the road
forks, with Broadway branching to the left (east) and a small street named Athens Way
branching to the right (west). Athens Way itself dead-ends (after only about 200 yards)
at the very next cross-street, which is Imperial Highway.

They filmed the hard-right-turn scene at the intersection of W. Imperial Highway & Athens Way, with
the bus turning right from southbound Athens Way to the westbound Imperial Highway.
By shooting this close to the freeway junction, they could show the freeway ramps
curving overhead, aiding the illusion that the bus was entering a freeway.
 *
( In the script, the police have guided the bus onto the unfinished 105 Freeway for the first time,
where Sandra can take advantage of the empty lanes and not have to worry about traffic jams.
The irony, of course, is that virtually all of the early freeway scenes were filmed on the same 105. )

But they find they have gone from the frying pan into the fire, when they learn that the
freeway they are on hasn't been finished, and that they are heading towards a deadly
gap in the road, at least 50-feet wide, and they can't stop or even slow down.

So, they opt to speed up and try to jump the gap.

This bus-jumping scene (perhaps the most memorable part of the movie) was shot
at the junction of the Harbor (110) Freeway and the Century (105) Freeways
(not far from the "hard right turn" location), in South Los Angeles.

To be more specific, the artificial gap in the freeway (created by early CGI), was located on the
transition ramp leading from the westbound Century (110) to the northbound Harbor (105).

Two buildings can be see during the bus jump scene, which allow us to pinpoint
the location.  One is a small body shop (next to a freeway tunnel) located just to
the right of the freeway, as the bus approaches the gap. The other is a brown
building (a janitorial supplies company) located right next to the gap.

Click on the labeled photos from the movie (below),
and you'll see all three of those locations marked on a Live Local map.

But immediately after the bus jump, the scene itself miraculously "jumps" 10  miles to
the west, on the 105, back to where we first saw Keanu drive his jeep onto the freeway,
near LAX airport (although at least this time they're driving back west). Take a look at the
buildings seen through the windows of the bus in the photo above. Those buildings line
Imperial Highway (at Nash Street), just east of Sepulveda.

*  Locations marked by an asterisk (*) may be located in high-crime areas.
Exercise reasonable caution.

More Speed locations!

Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5 - Page 6 - Page 7

Most of photos on this page are stills from the DVD of "Speed"
(which you can buy by clicking here) and are copyright 20th Century Fox.

The rest of the page is Copyright © 1999-2024-Gary Wayne/ Seeing-Stars.com