‘Freeway Matrimony’ : Transit: Friday’s ceremony will fully open 2.2-mile connector linking the Moorpark and Simi Valley freeways. The goal is to relieve street traffic.

On a windy April day in 1991, about 100 civic leaders gathered in Moorpark to watch a bulldozer cut a swath out of a hillside.

With this ceremonial bit of earth-moving, state transportation officials took the first step to close a critical gap in the web of highways in east Ventura County. Construction crews began linking the Moorpark and Simi Valley freeways.

Caltrans promised that this long-awaited case of “freeway matrimony” would pull traffic from clogged city streets and create a smoother route between Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

On Friday, civic leaders will gather again, this time to celebrate the completion of the $39.5-million connector--albeit six months behind schedule and $6.5 million over budget.

After the ribbon is cut and cars begin streaming across fresh white concrete in both directions--the westbound side was opened to traffic last Friday--local officials will get their first answers to long-debated questions on how the 2.2-mile connector will affect the area’s traffic.

Will it reduce congestion on Los Angeles Avenue in Moorpark and Madera Road in Simi Valley?

Will Thousand Oaks commuters leave the clogged Ventura Freeway behind and use the Moorpark and Simi Valley freeways to reach the north San Fernando Valley?

Will the connector create new rush-hour jams on the two freeways it links?

While waiting for the road to open, most local leaders were optimistic.

“I think there will be some major changes in the traffic patterns in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark,” said Simi Valley Councilman Bill Davis. “I think it will be far better.”

Thousand Oaks Councilman Frank Schillo believes that for his city the connector will bring mixed results.

“It will be a blessing because our people will be able to get in and out of the city a lot better,” Schillo said. “But it will be a curse because it will put a lot more traffic on the (Moorpark Freeway), which means a lot more noise.

“And it will create a lot more congestion at the intersection of the (Moorpark and Ventura) freeways.”

The most significant traffic relief will probably be seen on the surface streets of Moorpark.

Since the mid-1970s, well before the city was incorporated, Moorpark has enjoyed a dubious distinction: two busy freeways come to an abrupt end on the eastern outskirts of town.

“The city has had to cope with the traffic coming off those freeways,” Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason said.

To get from the end of the Moorpark Freeway to the beginning of the Simi Valley Freeway, motorists have had to follow a winding, 3.4-mile course along New Los Angeles Avenue, Spring Road and Los Angeles Avenue.

The route is along two-lane roads built for country driving. Slow-moving trucks and other vehicles must make several sharp turns.

Before construction of the connector began, the California Department of Transportation estimated that 23,000 vehicles per day were using this route. The agency predicted that the figure would climb to 72,000 vehicles daily by the year 2010.

“It’s such an immense amount of traffic that it creates congestion,” Lawrason said. “The public has been waiting for years to get the heavy commercial traffic off the majority of our streets.”

To accomplish this, east Ventura County leaders had to keep pressure on the state.

In 1983, the California Transportation Commission allocated $15 million for the connector. The decision was made despite objections from the panel’s executive director, who argued that the project would require more than Ventura County’s proportional share of road-building dollars.

Approval of Proposition 111, a 1990 ballot measure for statewide transportation projects, ultimately provided enough money to begin construction.

Building a major highway often disrupts neighborhoods, and community protests are common. But the Moorpark-Simi Valley freeway connector provoked few outcries.

“It’s rare that we have a project that’s so well-received all around--by the public and the public officials,” said Gary Ethier, a Caltrans engineer who helped supervise the construction.

The sole objection came in the late 1980s from residents living near Moorpark College. They complained that in order to avoid sensitive wetlands along the Arroyo Simi channel, the state had routed the connector too close to their houses.

“At one point, there was an alternate route, much farther south of the homes, that was going to be studied,” recalled Moorpark Councilman John Wozniak, a former Campus Park resident who was among the protesters.

But when the environmental review was completed, there was no mention of a second route, he said.

Caltrans officials later asserted that moving the connector away from the houses would be too costly, but Wozniak said the agency never documented this to his satisfaction. In addition, he said, Caltrans initially proposed no measures to keep traffic noise out of the neighborhood.

“The sound wall was not part of the original environmental document, and landscaping (near the neighborhood) was not part of the project,” Wozniak said. “I think our pressure got it to the point where the sound wall and the landscaping were added.”

Ultimately, Caltrans installed 6,600 square feet of sound wall along part of the connector to keep freeway noise out of nearby neighborhoods.

In 1989, near the end of the planning process, a double-deck freeway in the Bay Area collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake. The incident caused Caltrans engineers to order extra reinforcement for the Simi Valley-Moorpark freeway connector’s two bridges.

“They decided to spend more time with the plans to incorporate what we learned from the earthquake,” said Caltrans supervisor Ethier.

In early 1991, the budget to build the connector was set at $33 million--the low bid submitted by C.A. Rasmussen Inc. of Simi Valley and C.C. Myers Inc. of Rancho Cordova, Calif. Myers was to erect the freeway bridges, while Rasmussen handled the remaining construction work.

The $33-million bid was about $10 million less than Caltrans had expected.

Nevertheless, after construction began in April, 1991, the price began to climb.

One reason was the need to remove tainted earth from a former dump site along the connector’s route. Before the work began, a consultant estimated that 12,500 cubic yards of contaminated dirt would need to be hauled away.

When the digging began, however, that prediction turned out to be far too low. “We took out twice that amount,” Ethier said.

In addition, Caltrans decided to spend almost $100,000 on additional guardrails to protect motorists along some of the connector’s steep drop-offs.

The cost also rose because of delays blamed on severe rainstorms last winter. “We had one period where we went through about a month without getting any work done,” Ethier said.

The completed connector’s most striking feature is its twin bridges, soaring 100 feet and 85 feet above the Arroyo Simi, respectively.

The entire project required about 100 workers. The crews moved 1.8 million cubic yards of earth and poured 25,000 cubic yards of bridge concrete.

The workers also used 30,000 tons of asphalt-concrete pavement and 30,000 cubic yards of cement-concrete pavement. In addition, the crews used 5.6 million pounds of reinforcing steel, laid more than four miles of drainage pipe and set up more than four miles of chain-link fence.

The project required Caltrans to destroy six acres of wetlands. To make up for this, the agency set up a 17-acre wetlands nature preserve that will be used as a Moorpark College field laboratory.

Like some wetlands wildlife, projects such as the connector are becoming scarce. Because of its limited budget and the high cost of acquiring land, Caltrans has been widening highways instead of building entirely new stretches of freeway, such as the connector.

“This type of project is just about at an end,” Ethier said. “I’m going to miss something like this. This is a whole lot more fun than working out in the middle of traffic.”