Call for New Design Delays Widening of Ventura Freeway

The long-awaited widening of a congested stretch of Ventura Freeway in Woodland Hills has been delayed five months while state highway engineers comply with a federal demand to redraw plans.

The $18-million project, which is expected to tie up West San Fernando Valley traffic throughout construction, is not expected to get under way until January, with the expected completion date changed to October, 1988, a state Department of Transportation official said Monday.

Until recently, Caltrans maintained that the job would begin in August and be finished in March, 1988.

Work Sought for a Decade

For more than a decade, local civic and business leaders have campaigned for widening the two-mile stretch between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle boulevards, which is often called the “Woodland Hills bottleneck.”

Within the bottleneck, the freeway has just three lanes in each direction. West of Valley Circle, it widens to four lanes to Oxnard. East of Topanga Canyon, there are at least four--and in some cases five--lanes in each direction to the Hollywood Freeway.

The widening originally was scheduled to begin a year ago, but Caltrans officials said that engineering staff members could not prepare design work in time.

Wider Shoulders Required

Yuki Okuda, project engineer, said the latest delay is because of the insistence by the Federal Highway Administration, which is paying 85% of the cost, that wider shoulders be built on the westbound side of the freeway overpasses at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Ventura Boulevard and Shoup Avenue. The widening of the shoulders will require an extra two months of work and will add $1 million to what had been a $17-million project, Okuda said. The added funds are expected to be available.

Roger L. Stanard, who heads the Ventura Freeway Improvement Coalition, a business group pushing for freeway projects, said the delay “indicates to me that Caltrans does things at its own pace regardless of what anyone else says or wants.”

However, Stanard, a Woodland Hills lawyer, said that West Valley merchants will be relieved that the start of the bottleneck project has been pushed back beyond Christmas.

“Since it isn’t going to get under way on time, at least it will not be started just before the Christmas shopping season,” he said.

At some point in the project, first the westbound and then the eastbound lanes will be closed, with traffic in both directions forced onto the same side of the freeway.

Okuda said that the closures will last three to six months, and that the exact timing will be worked out between Caltrans and the contractor, who will not be selected before November.

To partly relieve the congestion, Caltrans has earmarked $2 million for electronic message signs, a radio transmitter to broadcast to motorists information on bypass routes and signs along alternate routes.

The extra lane is to be obtained by converting the center shoulder to highway use and by restriping the existing lanes.

The project also includes pavement repair between Topanga Canyon and Wilbur Avenue, including major repairs to Chalk Hill, the dilapidated section of road immediately west of Winnetka Avenue.