Car-Pool Lane Work Begins on Seven-Mile Freeway Stretch

Work has begun on a seven-mile stretch of the San Diego Freeway to add a car-pool lane in each direction between the Harbor Freeway and 120th Street near Hawthorne.

Planners believe that the $7.9-million project will not interfere with rush-hour traffic before it is completed about the middle of next year. Each of the existing four lanes of traffic, however, will be narrowed from 12 feet to 11 feet, contract administrator Earl Fukumoto said.

Initial construction is taking place only at night, with various lane closures required between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weeknights. Starting next month, work will take place during the day but without lane closures and behind “gawk screens” designed to limit slowing.

The new lanes, which will replace the fast-lane shoulder near the median strips, are being built by Chumo Construction Inc. of Baldwin Park and Ball, Ball & Brosamer Inc. of Danville.

A unique feature of the new lanes, Fukumoto said, is that they will have a central “enforcement area” between Crenshaw and Artesia boulevards where California Highway Patrol officers will be able to pull over car-pool lane violators without interrupting traffic.

The South Bay project is part of a push by the California Department of Transportation to build car-pool lanes, called high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, on all Los Angeles freeways. Similar projects have already been completed on the San Diego Freeway in Orange County and on the 91 Freeway east of Carson.

In 1996, work is scheduled to begin on an extension of the Orange County car-pool lane north to the Long Beach Freeway. Plans call for extending the San Diego Freeway car-pool lanes to a total of 26 miles, from the Orange County line to the Marina Freeway.

Planners say car-pool lanes carry up to 2 1/2 times the number of people as regular lanes.

Each lane “will be roughly equivalent to adding five additional lanes to the freeway,” Caltrans District Director Jerry B. Baxter said. “And that’s going to have a major impact on improving traffic flow.”