Delays Grow as Commuters Go Back to Work

As thousands more Los Angeles-area commuters returned to work Wednesday, bottlenecks grew by several miles on some quake-damaged routes and transportation officials raced to expand transit service and boost the ability of key surface streets to handle overflow traffic.

At one point, backups were estimated at nearly 11 miles and two hours approaching the collapsed junction of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways near Newhall, where a landslide temporarily blocked the main alternate route along Sierra Highway, officials said.

Palmdale resident Kevin Butler, who owns a Burbank fire door company, watched his normal one-hour commute extended to four hours and 15 minutes Wednesday. “I’m pretty drained,” Butler said, after rising at 4:15 a.m. and creeping along the Antelope Valley Freeway for nearly three hours before reaching the San Fernando Valley.

In the afternoon, commuters headed back to Palmdale and Santa Clarita waited for up to two hours on Roxford Street in Sylmar, after being routed off the Foothill Freeway. “This is terrible, I can’t stand it,” said John Carusillo, a landscaper.

Late Wednesday, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Franklin White announced a $100-million crash program to expand bus service and add four Metrolink commuter rail stations, extending service as far north as Lancaster, well beyond the Golden State and Antelope Valley Freeway interchange. The project, which will include dozens of additional rail cars, is to be completed within three weeks. The first two stations, in Lancaster and Palmdale, are scheduled to open Monday.

“We observed backups on (the Antelope Valley Freeway) as long as 11 miles,” MTA Chairman Richard Alatorre said Wednesday. “We need to divert traffic off (the highway) as far north as possible.”

Metrolink service to Simi Valley and Moorpark, which was suspended because of a train derailment Monday, also was scheduled to resume today.

In addition, a special express bus service was to be started this morning to carry workers from the Santa Monica-Malibu area to Downtown Los Angeles--around destroyed sections of the Santa Monica Freeway. A main boarding station was set up at the Will Rogers State Beach parking lot at Ocean and Pico boulevards in Santa Monica, with service every 20 minutes.

Monday’s earthquake destroyed 11 highway structures at eight locations, officials said, closing a total of 14 roads, including a 3.5-mile stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway, the nation’s busiest stretch of highway.

And officials also warned Wednesday that the volume of cars snaking through detours still appeared well below normal.

“We definitely figure it’s going to get worse in the next few days,” Caltrans spokesman Russell Snyder said.

Officials emphasized that the vast majority of the 597-mile freeway system in Los Angeles and Ventura counties flowed at least as freely as normal Wednesday.

But they also were glum in assessing the ability of their patchwork of detours in quake-ravaged areas to absorb a tide of vehicles that could materialize in the days ahead as people return to normal routines.

“There’s no way what we can put up will handle the amount of vehicles out there,” said Stanley J. Higgins, a supervisor in Caltrans’ computerized traffic nerve center in Downtown Los Angeles. “People are going to have to learn to car pool and use mass transit.”

At least for now, many were attempting to heed the advice. Motorists abandoned their cars to jam onto normally lightly traveled Metrolink commuter trains running to the city from the Santa Clarita Valley--on the far side of the virtually impassable Newhall interchange. The double-decker trains from Santa Clarita were doubled in size to handle 1,200 passengers each, and all were filled as they pulled into Downtown’s Union Station. “Great Scott--we are at capacity,” Metrolink spokesman Pete Hidalgo said. By day’s end, officials said ridership on the Santa Clarita route had soared eightfold.

But frustration mounted as remote train station parking lots overflowed and hourlong ticket lines formed at sometimes confounding, automated ticket machines. “Quite frankly, it can be a frightening experience” for new passengers, Hidalgo said. “People don’t know where to stand or how to buy a ticket.”

Trying to adjust to the onslaught, officials tripled the size of Metrolink’s staff on station platforms and, ultimately, instructed commuters to board trains with or without tickets and pay at their destinations. Also, the hunt was on Wednesday afternoon for more parking lots near stations, and officials were urging commuters to car pool or be dropped off at train stations. Officials also were encouraging new riders to purchase more convenient and economical monthly passes, which cost $144 for the trip from Santa Clarita to Los Angeles. Otherwise, each round trip is $10.

Even after passengers managed to board the trains Wednesday, things moved slowly. Trains rolled at reduced speeds because of continuing aftershocks, which caused 30-minute delays. And with the extra cars, trains exceed the length of Metrolink stations, forcing engineers to stop and start as they loaded passengers.

Navigating the final leg from stations to jobs provided some with a last, unwelcome challenge. Nicholas Nassif, a Los Angeles attorney who lives in Canyon Country and began riding Metrolink this week, developed his own strategy for using the rail line to his offices. He takes the train out of Santa Clarita, but uses his car to shuttle between the Metrolink station in Glendale and his office at Vermont Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in the Mid-City area.

Despite delays, Metrolink rider Marlene Foreman, who normally rides the bus from her Rosamond home to a bank in Downtown Los Angeles, said the train was “better than what I expected.”

The return trip Wednesday was more problematic. Service was temporarily disrupted after a 5.1 aftershock triggered a rock slide on freight tracks near the Newhall tunnel, Hidalgo said.

Caltrans engineers said they hope to have an additional bypass road open within four or five days at the collapsed Newhall interchange. And near the Santa Monica Freeway, local and state transportation officials were trying to gear up a high-tech, computerized system of traffic signals on adjacent boulevards to move larger volumes of rush-hour traffic.

Tie-ups on detours around the damaged Santa Monica Freeway appeared modest Wednesday morning, although officials said many motorists appeared to have stayed home or blazed new routes.

Downtown attorney John Hodes, who lives in Playa del Rey, tried the newly opened Century Freeway and connected to the Harbor Freeway. “I got here faster than I ever got here,” he said.

Anticipating more problems ahead, MTA officials also said they would add 20 buses beginning today to five existing Westside bus routes, increasing the frequency and capacity of MTA service on such major thoroughfares as Wilshire, Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards.

Dozens more buses--some borrowed from Orange County and other areas--were being added in the Central City and Valley areas to help ferry rail commuters to employment centers.

Although some commutes were clearly nightmarish, highway experts emphasized that problems were largely localized. Overall, far more people are affected, for example, when a first, heavy rush-hour rainstorm snarls vast sections of the sprawling freeway system. “I’ve seen worse,” said Caltrans’ Joseph Brahm, a senior transportation engineer who was monitoring traffic flow Wednesday morning.

Indeed, away from the points of greatest misery, there was a silver lining for some. Bottlenecks in outlying areas were holding back thousands of cars, meaning commutes Wednesday in some areas, including parts of the Valley, were far better than normal, officials said.

Westchester resident Bob Kessler, a computer consultant at Arco’s headquarters Downtown, said his bus commute was no longer than normal, despite detours off the Santa Monica Freeway. That was partly because beyond the troubled area, the freeway was virtually deserted.

“What was eerie was getting on the freeway and there was no traffic,” Kessler said.