Freeway Fear and Loathing : Commuters Seek Ways to Curb Construction Panic

Donald L. Like is planning to rent out his beloved Oxnard town house with its private boat dock and, for the next five years, move with his wife to a Sherman Oaks condominium within walking distance of his office.

Executive Gary McCrite is hoping to join several co-workers in purchasing a downtown condominium so he can skip the 82-mile round-trip commute from Westlake Village to his office at least once or twice a week.

Calabasas accountant Robert Lefton already has moved his office to within a mile of his home to avoid the Ventura Freeway altogether. Now, he may open a branch office in a Woodland Hills hotel room during tax season to avoid losing clients to traffic snarls.

Like loves his Oxnard town house and hates to leave it. McCrite will miss his family. Lefton says he doesn’t need the added expense of an extra office.

But all three have grown weary of doing daily battle with what officials say is the world’s busiest thoroughfare--the Ventura Freeway. And, with a major construction project scheduled to begin in the next month or two that will take at least three years, they fear U.S. 101 soon will become even more of a commuter’s nightmare.

Contingency Plans

As state Department of Transportation officials gear up for the massive project, some people who live in the area from the west San Fernando Valley to Ventura County are making contingency plans for dealing with the added problems they’re expecting.

Busy executives are looking into hiring limousines and helicopters, business owners are planning to stock extra supplies, and roadside restaurants are planning dinner and breakfast specials to lure harried commuters from their cars. Some people are even thinking of selling their homes to move closer to the city.

Caltrans officials say fears of massive gridlock are unwarranted.

Flashing roadside message boards and other elements of a sweeping management plan should keep traffic flowing, said Ken Nelson, Caltrans senior transportation engineer and design engineer for the freeway project. Moreover, most of the work will be done at night.

“We expect there will be some delay, but we do not think it’s going to be any worse than it is out there today,” Nelson said.

‘Total Chaos’

But many who frequently travel the Ventura Freeway are not buying the assurances.

The project “is going to create total chaos for the entire Valley,” predicted Ken Russell, owner of Thousand Oaks Realtors.

“There’s a tremendous amount of paranoia out here,” said Ken Flowers, president of the Calabasas realty company bearing his name. “People are just anticipating the worst. It’s probably the most discussed issue in this area.”

“Knowing that the freeway was going to be widened for the last several years, I have consistently moved my office farther west to try to get closer to my home,” Lefton said. “I started out way down in Woodland Hills and then moved out farther into Woodland Hills and just continued to move farther west to try to get out of that construction zone.”

Today, Lefton’s office is only a mile from his Hidden Hills home. But he fears that freeway congestion and confusion could cost him a sizable number of his Valley clients.

If the freeway is torn up during tax season, Lefton said he will open a temporary office in Woodland Hills to spare clients the drive to Calabasas.

“I’m petrified,” said McCrite, 46, general manager of the Los Angeles branch office of Transamerica Life Cos. “I think about it every time I’m on the freeway.”

Already, McCrite’s commute “takes two hours a day on a good day,” he said recently, speaking from the cellular phone in his Porsche 944 as he drove home from work at 9 p.m. Like he does most nights, he had waited out the traffic by remaining downtown.

McCrite, who typically leaves for work at 6 a.m., said: “I’m pretty sure I’ll have to leave home at 5:30 a.m. once this project goes through.”

Like, 55, co-owner of a financial planning and insurance company, already has placed a “for rent” sign in front of the Oxnard town home that he calls his “Camelot.”

In moving to the Valley, Like and his wife, Marvene, will reluctantly leave behind a life style that includes walks on the beach, outings in their 32-foot sailboat and relaxing hours spent on their porch, sipping wine and watching boats sail by.

But Like’s 110-mile round-trip commute to Sherman Oaks has grown more grueling over the eight years he has lived in Oxnard. The trip takes about an hour and 15 minutes--if he leaves at dawn. Once the freeway project starts, Like predicts the time will double.

So he and his wife will buy the condominium in Sherman Oaks and lease a slip for their boat at an Oxnard yacht club. They plan to spend their weekends on the boat.

“We’ll come back in five years when the project’s done,” said Like. “It’ll be a big pain . . . that’s what it’ll be. But the traffic gets worse and worse and worse. Four a.m. is about the only time of the day or night that you can make that drive in an hour.”

Other people, like Lefton, are moving their offices farther west or opening branch offices in an attempt to minimize the time spent on the freeway.

Some commuters are considering job changes to avoid the freeway entirely. Kerry D. Wright, assistant manager of Independence Bank in Calabasas, may ask for a transfer to a branch closer to his West Los Angeles home because of the project.

Dan L. May, 40, a studio set decorator who lives in Hidden Hills, said he may try to get work on a movie location outside Los Angeles for five or six months “if the traffic is horrendous.”

Car salesman Hal White, who is paid by commission, said he, too, could be forced to find a new job if car sales drop dramatically. White, who works at Calabasas Mitsubishi, said half the dealership’s customers come from the Valley. “Everybody here’s looking for another job because of that,” White said. “You can imagine what that will do to sales here.”

Although numerous realtors say housing sales have not dropped because of the project, several said anxious clients have called about the possibility of selling their homes.

Karyn Foley, a broker with Fred Sands Realtors in Woodland Hills, is one of several realtors who have received panicked calls from Las Virgenes area residents.

“I’ve spoken to a good half dozen,” Foley said. “They said, ‘I’m getting out of here. I’m worried.’ ”

Fed up with the commute, fatigued and “always six steps behind in terms of work,” orthopedic surgeon Daniel A. Capen and two partners bought a condominium near their Downey office two years ago. Now, the freeway project has prompted them to consider getting a limousine or van so they can do paper work in the back while being driven through traffic, Capen said.

Capen, 38, of Westlake Village and his partners are on hospital staffs in Oxnard and Downey. Each physician visits the Downey office several days a week and stays at the condominium instead of driving home.

When the freeway project gets under way, the doctors say they will probably stay in the condominium even more.

“That’s not something that we’re looking forward to,” said Capen, who has a 4-month-old baby.

Officials at Woodview-Calabasas Psychiatric Hospital are also considering using limousines to fetch their doctors, a shuttle service to transport patients and their families and a helicopter in case of emergencies, said Barbara Landis, director of community services.

Since the hospital is just off the Ventura Freeway, officials are worried that doctors will place their patients elsewhere to avoid the traffic battle. Nearby freeway ramps will be closed for several months during one phase of the project and a circuitous route will be needed to reach the facility, Landis said. The hospital is also considering a traffic update telephone line for doctors and hospital visitors.

Preparations are also being made to deal with life-and-death situations. In case of fire and medical emergencies, officials will call on some well-tested procedures to overcome freeway tie-ups, said Battalion Chief Gary Nelson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Calabasas station.

If the freeway is jammed in one direction, a neighboring jurisdiction will be asked to handle the call and any patient taken to a hospital in the other direction. In case of total gridlock, the department’s air ambulance can be called.

The road project is so feared that some people plan to avoid not only the freeway, but the Valley altogether.

Ruthanne Begun, 52, is one of them. Begun, who lives in Westlake Village and works in Thousand Oaks as a job counselor for teen-agers, visits the Valley frequently for shopping, socializing and medical care.

“I think I’m going to have to do a little more out here, make do with what we have here,” Begun said. “Life doesn’t end at the Las Virgenes off-ramp.”

Realtor Russell said he isn’t making appointments that involve travel on the Ventura Freeway without an “out-clause” allowing him to turn around and go home if there’s too much traffic.

“I’ll just turn around and forget it. I don’t want to sit there and be a slave to the freeway for two or three hours,” he said.

Foley plans to “ask Santa Claus for a car phone” and “go with the flow.” She hopes to make good use of time spent in freeway traffic jams.

“It’ll give me a chance to learn French better and hear beautiful concerts and some of the novels that I don’t have a chance to read, and it gives me a chance for alone time,” she said.

Foley is not the only one who plans on making the best of the situation.

John Perram, owner of the Pelican’s Retreat Restaurant in Calabasas, plans to open for breakfast and inaugurate early-bird dinner specials to entice freeway-goers who will be rerouted past his restaurant during the construction. “It’s a captive audience,” he said.

Likewise, Scott A. Soller, general manager of the Red Robin Restaurant along the Ventura Freeway in Calabasas, is preparing for an upswing in business.

“We’re going to love it,” he said. “We are hiring two extra people. We beefed up our ‘to go’ order system because I know there are going to be more customers.”

And others, who surrendered to the freeway long ago, will watch the whole process with amusement. Barbara Rae Hill, a receptionist at North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, quit what she calls “the greatest job in the world” and took a $4,000 pay cut because she hated her 30-mile Ventura Freeway commute.

“It took me 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day just going back and forth to Encino,” said the Westlake Village woman, who quit the job at an Encino bank two years ago. ‘Now, I’m happy as a clam. It takes me seven minutes to get to work.”

“The vice president of the bank even called me and said, ‘What can we give you to get you to come back?’ I said, ‘A helicopter.’ ”