Roads Panel to Act Today on New Ventura Freeway Lanes

If state transportation officials give their approval today, work could begin as early as October on widening the heavily congested Ventura Freeway through the heart of the San Fernando Valley, highway planners said Wednesday.

The $41.3-million widening project, which still might be held up if clean-air crusaders follow through on a threat to sue, is to be considered by the California Transportation Commission, which is meeting today in the northern California city of Fremont.

Commissioners, who are appointed by the governor, are expected to approve the project.

But the Coalition for Clean Air, which last year vowed to block the freeway widening in court unless it was redesigned to include a “diamond lane” restricted to vehicles with more than one occupant, will not decide until next week whether to sue.

However, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica-based organization indicated Wednesday that the group’s determination to sue seems to be wavering.

Issue Fought 2 Years Ago

“There’s a feeling among some of our people that this issue was fought and lost two years ago and ought not to be reopened,” said Jan Chatten-Brown, president of the coalition, which 11 months ago filed the legally required notice of intent to sue Caltrans on the issue.

Caltrans planners say that redesigning the project to include a diamond lane would take at least a year.

The 22-month project calls for the Ventura Freeway, which varies from 8 to 10 lanes, to be widened to a uniform 10 lanes from Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills to Universal City and then south on the Hollywood Freeway to Lankershim Boulevard.

To lessen the impact on the 277,000 vehicles that use the freeway daily, most work would be done at night.

But many on- and off-ramps would be closed at different times, “inconveniencing some motorists,” said Mark Archuleta, Caltrans project engineer.

The new lanes would be created by shrinking the existing 12-foot-wide lanes by one foot each and using the median.

The project has been delayed for years by a shortage of funds and by a fierce debate over whether the new eastbound fifth lane should be a diamond lane.

The new westbound fifth lane was designated as a general-use lane from the outset.

Caltrans initially promoted creation of an eastbound restricted-use lane as a means to increase the freeway’s capacity by inducing motorists to share rides.

Without such a restricted lane, Caltrans officials said, the freeway will return to heavy congestion within a year or two after it is widened.

But in the face of 12,000 mailed protests, mostly from West Valley and Ventura County residents, Caltrans in February, 1987, backed away and said the lane would be open to all vehicles.

Since then, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Federal Highway Administration have unsuccessfully sought to force Caltrans to include a diamond lane in the project.

The clean air coalition contends that the federal Clean Air Act requires the construction of 74 miles of diamond lanes, including a Ventura Freeway lane, because the network is included in the region’s 1979 Air Quality Management Plan. The coalition has successfully sued regional agencies on clean-air issues in the past.

Caltrans, which has three diamond lanes in California and is building or studying more than a dozen others, contends that such lanes are needed because the state has neither the money nor the room to expand existing freeways.

Critics contend that the lanes are unproven as a device for inducing motorists to form car pools or ride buses, and that they are unfair to those who travel at varying times and cannot share rides.