Santa Monica Freeway Could Reopen in May : Transportation: Round-the-clock work seven days a week pushes repairs to the expressway more than a month ahead of schedule.

Heralding good news for thousands of commuters, state transportation officials announced Thursday that repair work on collapsed sections of the Santa Monica Freeway is moving ahead so quickly that the roadway will be opened to traffic in May.

By working around the clock, seven days a week, the contractors who are repairing the world’s busiest expressway have pushed work more than a month ahead of schedule.

The freeway, which normally carries 341,000 cars a day, was closed at two points after sections of the elevated roadway collapsed at La Cienega and Washington boulevards during the Northridge quake.

State officials set a June 24 deadline for completion of the repairs, but offered the contractors incentives for finishing early. They will get a bonus of $200,000 a day if they beat the deadline, but will be penalized by the same amount for each day beyond the deadline.

If the work is done 30 days ahead of time, the contractors will receive an extra $6 million on the $15-million contract. But state and company officials say that some of the bonus will be eaten up by the expense of paying crews to work extra hours.

Jim Roberts, chief engineer at Caltrans, said records show that C.C. Myers Co., the firm rebuilding the Santa Monica Freeway, has completed 30% of the work, while only 20% of the time on the contract has elapsed.

“He’s way ahead,” Roberts said. “We expect to see that freeway open in May.”

The Jan. 17 quake damaged freeways in 200 locations. Seventy-eight bridges suffered moderate to major damage. Six bridges collapsed, causing closures and major detours.

For commuters, the crippled Santa Monica Freeway has forced traffic onto crowded surface streets between Santa Monica and Downtown Los Angeles. Typically, the detours have resulted in delays of 20 minutes or more.

Repairs on four other freeway failures in the north end of the San Fernando Valley are also well ahead of schedule, Roberts said. The total repair bill will be about $100 million, he said. Incentives to finish early range from a high of $200,000 a day to $75,000.

Carl Bauer, vice president of C.C. Myers, estimated that the company will complete its work about 40 days ahead of schedule, or by mid-May. Clinton C. Myers, company president, said he expects to finish the job even earlier, by the beginning of May.

“We are ahead of our projected schedule and we hope to continue to accelerate and pick up more time,” Bauer said.

Bauer said that the speedy work does not mean a reduction in quality and that the company will cut no corners.

“The job is being built to the highest standards,” he said. “There is nothing that’s temporary or any design criteria . . . being disregarded.”

Although 200 workers are now on the job and two of the crews are already working 12-hour shifts, Bauer said he hoped to increase the work force.

Caltrans officials said they selected C.C. Myers because the firm was the lowest bidder and has a good track record. The company worked on the recently opened Century Freeway and the new upper deck of the Harbor Freeway.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the firm was hired to reconstruct two quake-damaged bridges on California 1 at Watsonville. Given 100 days to complete the job, the company finished 40 days early, Bauer said, despite difficulties posed by the weather and terrain.

By comparison, Bauer said, work on the Santa Monica Freeway has been easier, even though it suffered two short setbacks.

First, workers unexpectedly encountered some old foundations that had to be removed. Then they found contaminated underground water, which had to be disposed of in accordance with strict state regulations. Myers estimated that those problems set the job back about 10 days.

“We just had some bad luck,” Myers said. Even so, he said, “there’s no doubt we’ll make it in less than 100 days.”

In other developments affecting the county’s freeways, state transportation officials Thursday announced plans by Gov. Pete Wilson to accelerate a program of reinforcing 1,000 freeway bridges statewide that have been identified by state engineers as seismically unsafe. About 40% are in Los Angeles County.

Last month, Wilson signed an emergency measure speeding retrofit work on fewer than 100 unsafe bridges in the county that were damaged by the quake.

But the comprehensive program announced by Dean R. Dunphy, secretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, calls for legislation that will cut red tape and accelerate work on all unsafe bridges, assuring retrofitting of all by 1995. An additional 1,500 bridges across the state are being screened for a final time to determine whether any of them also will need reinforcement.

A comprehensive engineering analysis of bridges in 1992 by Caltrans identified 716 in Los Angeles County that needed retrofitting.

The Times reported last month that only 115 so far have been strengthened, or about 16%.

Of the 10 bridges rated the most hazardous in the county, six have not been retrofitted, including some of the county’s busiest freeway junctures, such as the intersection of the Ventura and the Golden State freeways.

Roberts said that strengthening of the junction should be finished within a year if the governor’s plan is adopted by the Legislature.

The biggest repair job ahead is reconstruction of the collapsed intersection of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways, which fell during the quake, killing a motorcycle patrol officer.

Demolition work is far ahead of schedule and almost completed, Roberts said. But extensive reconstruction will not be finished until the end of the year.

The Simi Valley Freeway should be repaired by mid-May, Roberts said. The Gavin Canyon bridge over the Golden State freeway should be done by mid-June.

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