Ventura County Has Eye on an I for Its Freeway

Ventura County and its major cities have launched another effort to have the Ventura Freeway designated an interstate highway, a move that could direct millions of federal dollars into improvements on the busy route.

The Ventura County Assn. of Governments has asked the Los Angeles-area office of the California Department of Transportation to study the matter and recommend approval to state Caltrans director Leo J. Trombatore, said association executive director Norman Blacher. The association represents the county and its 10 incorporated cities.

Should Caltrans approve the plan, it also would have to be approved by the regional and national offices of the Federal Highway Administration.

Blacher said his group requested the change because it appears that, for the next several years, state funds for major improvements will be available only for interstate highways. Ventura County has no interstate routes.

“We’re doing this to explore alternatives to funding highways,” Blacher said, adding that earlier attempts to obtain interstate designation, including one in 1982, were turned down by Caltrans because of the potential cost to the state of upgrading the highway to federal standards.

He said that new federal rules make it easier for states to apply for interstate status, leading the association to believe it has a better chance of getting state and federal approval.

“It certainly has the traffic of an interstate,” said Edwin A. Jones, chairman of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. “Why not call it an interstate?”

The Ventura Freeway, serving large residential areas in the western San Fernando Valley and eastern Ventura County, is one of the busiest in the region, Caltrans spokeswoman Pat Reed said. She said nearly 500,000 cars a day pass the San Diego-Ventura freeway interchange in Sherman Oaks, the highest traffic volume in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Federal rules require the state to pay for upgrading a highway to meet interstate standards within 12 years of approval, and the federal government will not match state funds for those improvements, said Allan Hendrix, Caltrans’ deputy director of planning. No estimates of the costs were available, Hendrix said.

Hendrix said that a state highway improvement program under review by the state Transportation Commission would budget all state highway funds to match federal dollars for repairs of interstate highway.

Major repairs to other highways, including the widening of the Ventura Freeway in Camarillo, are being paid for with funds earmarked in previous state transportation budgets.

Among the criteria are that the highway must directly serve an urban area that generates large amounts of traffic; it must represent a logical addition to the interstate system, and must terminate at another interstate highway, an international border or an ocean at both ends.