Ventura Freeway Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better

It’s been crowned the world’s busiest thoroughfare, but the Ventura Freeway is anything but a showpiece.

Long sections of its pavement in the San Fernando Valley are crumbling and, in some places, it has no inside or outside shoulder.

Its width varies inexplicably from three to five lanes, creating a series of nerve-rattling bottlenecks that slow traffic to a crawl, then speed it up again. Even on a good day, the freeway has eight hours of rush-hour congestion.

The state Department of Transportation says everything is going to get better.

But, first, things are going to get worse. For about four years.

Starting in December, Caltrans plans a $90-million make-over on venerable U.S. 101.

Before the end of 1991, four major expansion and rehabilitation projects are to be completed along the freeway between Thousand Oaks and Universal City, a distance of 24 miles.

After the last anguished cries of construction-stalled motorists die down, there will be four lanes each way from Thousand Oaks to Woodland Hills and five each way from there to the Hollywood Freeway.

Highway engineers say that should be enough lanes in the right places to smoothly handle the Valley’s ever-growing traffic volume, at least for a year or two.

It is by chance, not choice, that all the construction is occurring at about the same time.

The projects became bunched up after some of them were delayed by years of wrangling over financing and especially over whether the freeway should have a “diamond” lane, restricted to car pools and buses. It won’t have such a lane.

“It was never planned that all these projects would come together as they have,” said Jack Hallin, Caltrans’ project development chief for Southern California. “But it’s not so terrible that they have come together. At least we’ll get it all over with.”

The schedule for the work:

A $20.4-million project will begin in December to add a fourth lane in each direction from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Valley Circle Boulevard. This will eliminate the infamous “Woodland Hills bottleneck,” a two-mile stretch of freeway with three lanes in each direction.

In the same year-and-a-half period, Caltrans will add a fifth lane westbound on the Ventura Freeway between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and White Oak Avenue. It also will replace scattered segments of broken pavement, most notably on bumpy Chalk Hill, immediately east of Winnetka Avenue.

While that work is under way, Caltrans will repave a nine-mile section of the freeway between Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas and Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks.

That $15-million project, which will not enlarge the freeway’s capacity of four lanes each way, is to be started in the spring and finished by the end of 1988.

Five inches of asphalt are to be put over the existing concrete, which Caltrans says is rapidly and unexpectedly breaking up because rock with an unusually high acid content was used when the freeway was paved in the early 1970s.

Beginning late in 1988, work will begin on completing the expansion of the Ventura Freeway to five lanes each way from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to the Hollywood Freeway. About one-third of the distance has been five lanes since the early 1970s, contributing greatly to the freeway’s patchwork feeling.

That $22-million, 16-month project is likely to affect more motorists than all the other construction combined, Caltrans planners say.

It will tie up traffic on the most heavily traveled segment of freeway in the nation, a dubious accolade the Ventura earns by carrying an average of 270,000 cars per weekday at its intersection with Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino.

Included in the major widening will be expansion of the Hollywood Freeway from the Ventura south to the Los Angeles River, a distance of about one mile.

As with the new lanes in the Woodland Hills bottleneck, the new fifth lanes will be secured by narrowing the existing 12-foot-wide lanes to 11 feet and taking seven of the 10 feet from the median shoulder.

The same configuration--narrow lanes with no median--has been in use for more than a decade on the freeway between White Oak and Van Nuys Boulevard and elsewhere in Southern California.

The final project, and also the costliest, will be expansion of the freeway intersection at Valley Circle Boulevard-Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills.

Enlargement of the underdeveloped intersection, long a nettlesome choke point at the western end of the Woodland Hills bottleneck, is expected to cost $30 million. It is scheduled to begin in two years and be finished in late 1991.

Design work is not completed on the project, but it won a place on Caltrans’ schedule by dint of persistent lobbying from local elected officials who argued that all the Ventura Freeway projects should be done at once to avoid dragging out the agony.

At the June meeting of the California Transportation Commission, which controls state highway spending, the all-at-once argument proved to be persuasive where arguments based on congestion had failed consistently over the years.

If, as Caltrans predicts, construction equipment appears along the freeway in Woodland Hills in late December or early January, many skeptics will be surprised.

Bypass Development

The project to eliminate the bottleneck has been delayed repeatedly--once because of minor design changes ordered by the Federal Highway Administration and another time because Caltrans decided to spend more time developing a bypass for local traffic in Woodland Hills.

Finally, it was put off so that the work would dovetail, albeit somewhat imperfectly, with expansion of the freeway from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to the Hollywood Freeway.

The postponements have bred cynicism among motorists.

“Is that still on?” responded auto parts salesman Royce A. Miller of Sylmar, who said he at one time thought of swapping his West Valley route for one in another territory to avoid construction delays.

“Now I figure I’ll deal with it when it happens.”

Ron Palmer, a Litton Industries community relations executive who is responsible for keeping the firm’s 3,500 Warner Center employees apprised of commuting conditions, said he has become “very cautious about sounding the alarm” because of all the delays. “How many times can you cry wolf?”

Although the job is scheduled to begin in late December, Palmer plans to wait until well into 1988 before launching efforts to educate employees about the availability of subsidized van pools and the freeway bypass routes to be marked out by Caltrans west of Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

“By that time,” he said, “hopefully there will be some visible signs of the project and our employees will see that construction is actually going to occur.”

An employee transportation specialist with a firm near Universal City, who asked not to be identified, said that, because of Caltrans’ postponements, his superiors “look at me askance whenever I bring up the freeway job. They’ve heard it too many times before.”

If the multiple delays have bred a wait-and-see attitude among business executives and motorists, elected officials have displayed no such reticence.

Truck Ban Considered

Anticipating a major cry for help once the widening projects go into full swing, several have sought to grab public attention with congestion-alleviating proposals.

Most notable has been a proposal by Los Angeles City Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael Woo to ban trucks from the freeway during peak hours while construction is under way.

The council appointed a task force to study the issue. The panel is scheduled to consider Nov. 9 a staff recommendation that any “ban” be voluntary.

Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys), has proposed that, during construction, the state pay Amtrak to extend existing San Diego-to-Los Angeles trains north to Santa Barbara, providing three round-trips daily for commuters from Ventura County and the Valley.

Although Caltrans engineers have deemed the plan nearly impossible to accomplish, the state Transportation Commission has responded favorably and ordered further study.

Commissioner Bruce Nestande appeared to speak for the commission when he said that the widening work represents a crisis requiring extreme measures such as Robbins’ train proposal.

Despite the expectations of elected officials, most city and county transportation experts are optimistic. They feel that Caltrans took much of the pain out of the construction projects by electing several months ago to do all work on the pavement at night.

Also, most expect the bypass routes in Woodland Hills to succeed.

“Caltrans says the bypasses and other measures should keep congestion from getting worse during construction . . .,” said Thomas Conner, principal transportation engineer with the Los Angeles City Department of Transportation.

“A lot of us in the transportation field who have studied their plans feel they should meet their goal.”

Bliss Not Predicted

Even if the upcoming construction projects come off with relatively little dislocation, transportation planners are loath to predict a future of motoring bliss for Ventura Freeway users.

Anticipating the worst, Caltrans already has begun studying the feasibility of double-decking the freeway from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to downtown and making the upper deck a toll road.

David Roper, deputy district director of Caltrans, predicts that, immediately after the freeway is widened, there will be little or no congestion.

But then, he said, volume will gradually rise as residents increasingly use the freeway for local shopping trips, commuters who now take surface streets drift over to the freeway and residential and commercial growth occurs in the West Valley and Ventura County.

“I give it 12, maybe 18 months,” Roper said. “Then stop-and-go will start again, and this time there will be no relief in sight.”

U.S. 101 ROAD CONSTRUCTION NEXT 4 YEARS

PROJECT No. 1

Begins: Dec. 1987

Ends: Sept. 1989

Boundary: White Oak Avenue to Valley Circle Boulevard.

Estimated cost: $20.4 million. Project Outline: Add fourth lane in both directions from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Valley Circle.

Add fifth westbound lane from White Oak to Topanga.

Resurface and reconstruct scattered segments of pavement, including Chalk Hill west of Winnetka Avenue.

Replace 3,200 feet of pavement at Valley Circle interchange. What Motorists Will Face:

All work on pavement will be done in the evening or at night. Day work projects, such as retaining walls, will be screened from motorists.

Between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle, three lanes in each direction will be open throughout the project, but all six lanes will be on the same side of median for a time, almost certainly causing some slowing. Details will be worked out after contractor is selected this month.

Suggested bypass routes will be marked with signs on local streets in both directions between Topanga and Valley Circle. (See detailed map, Page 8)

Some ramps between Topanga and Valley Circle will shut for up to eight months at a time.

Park-and-ride lots will be west of construction area. Van pools and express bus service will be subsidized by city, county and state.

PROJECT No. 2

Begins: Spring, 1988

Ends: Dec. 1988

Boundary: Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas to Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks.

Estimated cost: $15 million. Project Outline:

Add 5 inches of asphalt to existing concrete, which has begun breaking up because rock with an unusually high acid content was used when freeway was paved 18 years ago. What Motorists Will Face:

All work to be done between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

In early morning hours, there could be additional slowing of traffic as lanes are closed down to speed work. At least one lane will be maintained in each direction.

PROJECT No. 3

Begins: Late 1988, early ’89

Ends: March 1990

Boundary: Hollywood Freeway crossing at Los Angeles River to Topanga Canyon Boulevard on Ventura Freeway.

Estimated cost: $22 million. Project Outline:

Add fifth lane eastbound from Topanga to Hollywood Freeway and westbound from Hollywood Freeway to White Oak. Eastbound side of freeway already has been widened to five lanes between Hayvenhurst Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard, and westbound side already is five lanes from Van Nuys Boulevard to White Oak.

Widen roadway to accommodate shoulder on eastbound side between Hayvenhurst and Haskell Avenue.

Widen roadway to accommodate shoulder and sound wall on westbound side between Van Nuys and Sepulveda boulevards. What Motorists Will Face:

All work on pavement to be done in evening or at night. Day work to be screened from motorists, although some slowing of traffic is anticipated.

All existing lanes to be kept open throughout project.

Various ramps closed for differing lengths of time.

PROJECT No. 4

Begins: Late 1989

Ends: Late 1991

Limits: Ventura Freeway interchange with Valley Circle Boulevard.

Estimated cost: $30 million. Project Outline:

Reconstruct and enlarge Valley Circle interchange, including new on- and off-ramps. What Motorists Will Face:

Work will be off freeway pavement, but interchange construction normally slows traffic somewhat.

Final design not completed, but ramps likely to be closed for long periods during construction.

WOODLAND HILLS BYPASS ROUTES

Begin Construction: Dec. 1989

End Construction: Sept. 1989

Ramps Closed: Westbound at Topanga Canyon Blvd., Valley Circle Blvd. and Parkway Calabasas; Eastbound at Mulholland Drive and Fallbrook Ave.

Temporary Off-ramp: Eastbound at Mureau Rd.