Riverbed Freeway Proposal Receives Qualified Backing

The idea of turning the Los Angeles River into a freeway passed its first test Friday after a county transportation consultant gave the proposal a qualified endorsement.

The consultant’s report, based on a $15,000, six-week study that the author conceded was incomplete, now goes to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which will decide whether to undertake a more ambitious study over the coming year.

“What we learned today is that the plan is not fatally flawed,” said Neil Peterson, executive director of the Transportation Commission and a member of the working group that received the consultant’s report Friday.

“At least initially this idea has passed the reality check,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz, a Sylmar Democrat and the unchallenged champion of the project. Katz said he would have liked the consultant’s report better if it had contained fewer reservations.

As Katz envisions it, the roadway would operate in two segments--a stretch reserved for buses, vans and car-poolers running from the west San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles, and a length extending from downtown south to Long Beach for trucks.

The idea of a road in the riverbed, much of which is lined with concrete, is opposed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who wants to develop a greenbelt of parks and trails, and by environmental groups who warn that almost 30 types of trees and plants and six wildlife species would be threatened by a freeway.

The consultant’s report, prepared by IWA Engineers of Fountain Valley, concluded that much of the river could support a freeway and that it would relieve traffic congestion on several area freeways. The report did not address potential environmental losses.

The report points to a number of potential problems. It says a system must be developed to keep vehicles out of the riverbed when flooding is possible. It also says that the freeway could not run the full 30 miles of the riverbed from Topanga Canyon to the Los Angeles Harbor envisioned by Katz because of tidal backwash from the harbor and because the riverbed is too narrow near its crossing with the Hollywood Freeway and Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley.

Rainy Weather Estimate

The report says that the riverbed could function safely as a roadway up to 90% of the year, but it cautions that rainy weather could limit travel to 220 days a year. Katz had predicted it could be used 330 days or more each year.

Katz has estimated the cost at $30 million a mile or about 10% of the cost of the first segment of the city’s Metro Rail system.

But he admitted Friday he was surprised by one finding of the consultant’s report that could add to the cost of building the river bottom freeway. According to the report, about 50% of the river right of way needed to build the freeway would have to be acquired from various landowners through condemnation.

Opponents Remain Firm

The report also recommended that additional right of way be acquired through adjacent industrial areas to permit the roadway to skirt the river in areas where the river bottom is not paved and where trees and wildlife are most plentiful.

However, that recommendation did not lessen the opposition of the environmental group, Friends of the Los Angeles River, which has been most outspoken against the plan.

“It’s still a cockeyed idea,” said Lewis MacAdams, co-founder of the group.

The report stated that the river is an important part of the county’s network of flood control channels and asserts that the flood potential has increased. It said further study is needed to determine what effect a freeway would have on the river’s ability to function as a flood control channel.

Under Katz’s plan, only a portion of the riverbed would be needed for the roadway.