Caltrans Drops Plan to Close Segment of Ventura Freeway for Repaving

The state Department of Transportation has dropped a controversial plan to close the Ventura Freeway between Calabasas and Thousand Oaks and reroute traffic onto local streets while the freeway is being repaved.

Instead, one freeway lane will be kept open in each direction at all times between Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas and Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks, Jack Hallin, Caltrans’ project development chief, said Monday.

In recent weeks, officials in Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Agoura Hills have registered strong protests against the proposed rerouting, saying it would harm residential and commercial streets along the freeway.

Local Opposition Cited

The nine-month, $15-million repaving project is designed to stop the spread of potholes along the freeway. The repaving is scheduled to begin in the spring, with all work to be done between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Hallin said the decision to scrap the plan to reroute traffic onto local streets was based on local opposition and a determination that the cost of repairing damage to local streets would offset any savings from closing the freeway.

“They were both important factors,” he said.

“However, if we could have projected a cost savings from rerouting the traffic we probably would have pushed harder to convince local officials that their concerns were unjustified,” he said.

He said that in the middle of the night, traffic on the freeway in the Las Virgenes Road area drops to about 300 cars per hour, which would not have overburdened side streets.

However, Sheila Holt, field deputy for state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), said Monday that rerouting traffic would have “made it impossible to sleep along Agoura Road or Thousand Oaks Boulevard with all the trucks.”

Strong Opposition

She said that Caltrans “apparently saw that opposition was a little too strong.”

Caltrans engineers announced a year ago that the eight-mile section of freeway between Las Virgenes and Hampshire roads is plagued with “reactive aggregate,” a malady that results in slow deterioration.

If unchecked, the small craters that began showing up a year ago in the slow lanes in both directions will spread to all lanes, engineers say.

The engineers said they traced the problem to unusually acidic rock, or aggregate, from a Simi Valley gravel pit which supplied the rock when the freeway was paved 18 years ago.

To halt the problem, Caltrans plans to place five inches of asphalt over all lanes of the deteriorating concrete.

When repaved, the Ventura Freeway should not need attention for 20 years, Hallin said.

Simi Valley Problem

Caltrans spokesman Gene Berthelsen said the only other freeway in California to have developed reactive aggregate is the Simi Valley Freeway, which also used rock from the same gravel pit when it was paved 18 years ago.

A seven-mile section of the Simi Freeway in Simi Valley was repaved last year at a cost of $5.7 million.