Carmageddon predicted for L.A.'s 405 closing
By William M. Welch, USA TODAY|
LOS ANGELES — If there's anything that unites residents and visitors across the sprawling Southern California metropolis, it is despair over transportation, from clogged freeways to inadequate public transit.


By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY
Approximately 150 message signs have been activated and placed around Los Angeles County in preparation for the 405 closure during road construction this weekend.

That fearsome Los Angeles traffic is about to get much, much worse this weekend: A 10-mile stretch of the nation's busiest highway, Interstate 405, will be shut down for 53 hours as part of a $1 billion reconstruction project.

City and transit officials say the closing is necessary to demolish an overpass bridge. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, other officials — and even Erik Estrada, who as motorcycle cop "Ponch" patrolled the freeway on the TV show CHiPS in the late 1970s and early '80s — have been going on local broadcasts to warn that ensuing backups could be super-size.

"If you think it's bad now," Villaraigosa warns, "on July 16 and 17, it will be an absolute nightmare."

PHOTOS: Interstate 405 closed for repair
A road closing may seem a routine inconvenience elsewhere and hardly worth noting in cities devastated recently by floods, fires and tornadoes. But in car-dependent Los Angeles, the I-405 closing is being touted as not just the biggest traffic disruption in decades but also as an almost apocalyptic event that will be felt for miles and miles.

Call it Carmageddon.

"You need to stay away," says the California Department of Transportation regional director, Mike Miles.

"Pick this weekend to stay home," says L.A. Police Lt. Andrew Neiman. "If you think you're going to bypass the closure by some secret canyon route, you and a million other people have the same idea."

Interstate 405, also known as the San Diego Freeway or simply "the 405," is an almost 50-mile multilane bypass along the city's West Side, stretching from the San Fernando Valley southward to Irvine. There it rejoins Interstate 5, which continues on to the Mexico border.

It handles a half-million vehicles on a typical day, Miles says. One of them, in June 1994, was the white Ford Bronco carrying former football star O.J. Simpson on a televised slow-speed chase by police after the slayings of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

It is a reviled bottleneck, moving traffic slowly past the South Bay beaches, snaking around the entrance to Los Angeles International Airport and skirting the UCLA campus. It runs through the neighborhoods of the affluent-to-super-rich residents of coastal Santa Monica and Malibu, western Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and the desirable, hidden canyon neighborhoods in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The area being closed, between I-10 and U.S. 101, is its most notorious section, climbing over the Sepulveda Pass between the San Fernando Valley and the rest of the city. A habitual commuting choke point, it is the last link of the 405 to be widened for car pool lanes.

The impact is likely to stretch far beyond that 10-mile patch of pavement.

Miles says the frenzied warnings are intended to make people realize they may be affected even if they aren't planning to go near the 405. In the region's tangled noodle of freeways, "we anticipate backups anywhere from 28 to 64 miles," he says. Traffic flows may be disrupted all the way to Kern and San Bernardino Counties to the north and east, he said, and perhaps even southward to San Diego County.

"Traffic is like water," Miles says. "It tries to find the path of least resistance."

Construction has closed lanes of the 405 off and on for more than a year, but this is the first complete shutdown. Officials say there is no other way to demolish the Mulholland Drive bridge.

Neighborhoods affected include super-expensive homes north of Sunset Boulevard, where prices can run $25 million to $50 million, says Syd Leibovitch, owner of Rodeo (pronounced Row-DAY-oh) Realty.

With so much money on the line, he and his agents aren't heeding the warnings.

"We're going to leave our offices open that weekend, and we're just going to hope for the best," he says. "It's going to be a nightmare for them, but they're still going to show (homes)."

The non-rich, of course, are most affected. Sepulveda Boulevard, which parallels the closed section of freeway, will be closed to all but residents to avoid being overwhelmed. It is dotted with small businesses whose owners are dismayed by the disruption.

"We're expecting to lose 50% to 80% of our business," says Mabel Escoton, owner of Mabel's Dog Grooming.

Maria Ortega, a groomer who commutes on the 405 from Culver City, says she can't afford to miss Saturday, her busiest workday. "If I can get here, I work. If not, I stay home," she says.

Down the street at Top Town Nails, salon owner Tracey Tran is closing for the weekend.

"All my employees cannot get to work, and my regular customers have been canceling for Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday already," Tran says. "Of course, everyone needs their income for that period. It's very inconvenient. But what can we do?"

At UCLA Medical Center, which operates two facilities on either side of the 405, Chief Operating Officer Shannon O'Kelley says doctors, nurses and other staff who need to be close by will be housed for the weekend in dorms, a campus hotel, unused hospital rooms and on cots and even gurneys. The hospital will have helicopters standing by for emergencies, and doctors are postponing procedures where possible.

Police, Highway Patrol and fire officials have reconfigured their response regions and are beefing up staffing, so responders can get to emergencies without trying to cross or go around the closed highway.

The L.A. Fire Department plans to put some emergency medical responders on motorcycles, Capt. Alicia Mathis says. The goal: to be at any call within five minutes, the department's standard on any day.

At LAX airport, where officials estimate 170,000 passengers will pass through each day, spokeswoman Nancy Castles says many of the 20,000 people who work at the airport on any day are being put on longer, 12-hour shifts, and some airport firefighters will stay at work all weekend. Hotels have been arranged for critical personnel.

For travelers, there will be fewer buses to the airport, many routed through other freeways or surface streets, adding hours to the trips. About 65,000 vehicles arrive or leave LAX every day, not including off-site parking, so airport officials are pleading with the public to make other arrangements, give themselves ample time and don't plan on car travel.

"Please," Castles says, "don't ask your friends to come pick you up."

At the construction site, contractors plan to lay a 6-foot bed of soil on top of the freeway to protect it from concrete chunks falling from the bridge. They plan to saw the bridge lengthwise and bring down two of its four lanes to permit construction of a longer bridge that will span a widened freeway beneath it.

Another closing will be scheduled in about a year to demolish the other side of the Mulholland bridge.

The freeway section will be closed at midnight Friday, but on-ramps and lanes will shut down earlier that evening. The freeway is to be reopened by 5 a.m. Monday morning. There will be no delays, says L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Dave Sotero.

"It's a highly choreographed event," he says. "By hook or crook, hell or high water, we will open the 405 Monday morning."

In light of all the warnings, some say the scare tactics may be so successful that traffic will be light this weekend.

Daniel Faigin, a computer security specialist and amateur historian of California freeways, says that's what happened in 1984, when drivers avoided the West Side when it hosted the Summer Olympics. "It's going to be bad, but it's not going to be as bad as they say it's going to be," Faigin says.

Still, he's not as confident that contractors will meet their timetable to reopen an hour before his daily crossing of the Sepulveda Pass in a car pool.

"Our van is probably not going to drive in on Monday morning," Faigin says. "I'm not sure it'll be open. We'll just work from home that day."

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