Low Bid Bolsters Ventura Freeway Widening

Ending more than two years of delay caused by a dispute over whether to include a car-pool lane, bids for widening the traffic-clogged Ventura Freeway across the San Fernando Valley were opened Thursday, preparing the way for the start of construction in about two months, Caltrans officials announced.

Highway engineers had worried that the project, estimated to cost $35.8 million, might come in significantly over budget, forcing a new round of bidding.

But the low bid of $36.9 million, submitted by Tutor-Saliba Corp. of Sylmar, was only about 3% over the estimate by the state Department of Transportation.

Jack Hallin, Caltrans’ Southern California project development director, said that “based on the overall amount and assuming the bid meets our specification in other areas, it looks like the contract will be awarded.”

The 22-month project is expected to bring short-term relief to the Valley’s main east-west artery, which has eight to 10 hours of congestion each weekday.

However, Caltrans engineers predict that traffic generated by continuing development in the West Valley and Ventura County will cause a return of pre-widening congestion levels within one to two years after the project is completed in late 1991.

The freeway, which carries 280,000 vehicles daily, is a patchwork of eight- and 10-lane-wide sections. It is to be expanded to 10 lanes from the Hollywood Freeway to Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a distance of 15 miles.

The new lanes are also to be extended south on the Hollywood Freeway to Lankershim Boulevard, south of which the freeway is already 10 lanes.

New lanes will be created by narrowing the existing 12-foot-wide lanes by one foot each and by using part of the median.

To lessen the impact on traffic, Caltrans officials said, most work will be done at night.

Since 1985, the proposed freeway widening has been embroiled in a bitter dispute over whether the fifth eastbound lane should be a “diamond lane,” restricted to vehicles with two or more occupants.

Free-Flowing Diamond Lane

Traffic engineers said that only with a free-flowing diamond lane to lure motorists into forming car pools will the freeway be able to handle traffic until the end of the century.

Caltrans, which is building a regional network of the restricted lanes, backed away from the Ventura Freeway proposal in February, 1987, citing protest letters from more than 12,000 people, mostly from the West Valley and Ventura County.

Opponents contend that car-pool lanes are unproved 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.

After Caltrans dropped the car-pool lane, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Federal Highway Administration unsuccessfully pressured the state agency to reverse its position.

Recently, the Coalition for Clean Air filed a legally required notice of intent to sue to force designation of the eastbound lane for car pools and buses.

The Santa Monica-based group contends that the freeway car-pool lane and others projected throughout Southern California are needed to lower car emissions to meet federal clean-air standards.

But coalition President Jan Chatten-Brown said Thursday that her group had abandoned plans to go to court “because the likelihood of our prevailing was not strong enough, although we still think a car-pool lane is very much needed on the Ventura Freeway.”

West of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a smaller freeway widening project is nearing completion.

The $23-million West Valley project is designed to eliminate a bottleneck where the freeway narrows to six lanes between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle boulevards, although it has long been eight lanes wide both east and west of the project area.

Jim McAlister, resident engineer of the Woodland Hills project, said the new lanes “probably will be open in another month, although it might be sooner.”