I-10 Drivers Celebrate Reopening of Freeway : Transit: First-day volume is down 15%. Car-pool lane is erased, making the rush-hour commute slower for some.

For perhaps the first time ever, motorists Tuesday celebrated rush hour on the Santa Monica Freeway, which reopened 84 days after the Northridge earthquake with drivers tooting horns and shouting gleefully as they zipped over the recently poured concrete.

The freeway, one of five shattered by the quake, opened 2 1/2 months early at a cost of $29.4 million, the result of crews working around the clock, seven days a week, in rain and on holidays.

“The rubber is meeting the road today,” proclaimed Vice President Al Gore during formal opening ceremonies alongside the freeway as cars whizzed by.

For Westside motorists, who had been forced to navigate a system of surface-street detours, the freeway was not only back, but better. It carried about 15% fewer cars than its normal pre-quake volume. That meant that some frustrated drivers were sticking to alternative routes they carefully crafted after the quake, said Caltrans officials, who do not expect the trend to last.

The only people moving more slowly were car-poolers, who had enjoyed speedy rides on some sections of the freeway that had been reserved for cars with two or more riders in the wake of the quake. With the completion of the freeway, the temporary car-pool lanes were removed.

“We not only have L.A. moving again but in the fast lane,” a beaming Gov. Pete Wilson told the small crowd near the Fairfax Avenue off-ramp. “You’ve proved what I always believed: They can shake us but they can’t break us.”

After the Northridge earthquake, Caltrans officials initially predicted that the Santa Monica and four other damaged freeways would be restored in 12 to 18 months. Then, to the disbelief of many commuters, they trimmed the estimate to six months.

“The lesson is very simple,” Wilson said. “If there’s united support for the project, the project gets done.”

The opening of the Santa Monica was made more urgent by politics: President Clinton, who will need California’s goodwill if he runs for another term, accelerated the flow of federal dollars, which paid for the entire project. And Wilson, running behind in the polls for reelection this year, made every effort to cut red tape.

In addition, by offering contractor Clinton Myers a $200,000-per-day incentive for every day he finished ahead of the June 24 deadline, Caltrans officials launched one of the great construction races of all times. The bonus was calculated after state officials estimated that the downed freeway was costing the region $1 million a day in delayed deliveries and travel.

Reconstruction of two downed portions of the freeway at La Cienega Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue was completed in a scorching 66 days, earning Myers a bonus of almost $15 million, an amount that will be partially consumed by overtime and other costs of the accelerated construction.

At the project’s peak, about 400 ironworkers, carpenters, finishers and laborers scrambled atop the scaffolding and wood framing that would become the Santa Monica Freeway bridges. They worked day and night, seven days a week on shifts that lasted 12 hours or longer. For some it meant not seeing their spouses and children. For others it meant moving to temporary quarters, sometimes a trailer plunked right in the middle of the construction site. “At night, you lay down in bed, you just collapse and wake up the next morning,” said Dan Sparks, 30, an engineer from Huntington Beach.

Denicia Mitchell, a pile driver, did not see her 7- and 8-year-old daughters for weeks on end while she worked on the freeway. But she looked forward to bringing them to see what she had done.

“You look at a bridge and you say, ‘I was there, I helped do that,’ ” Mitchell said. “I’ll be in a car and drive by and say, ‘I built that column.’ It’s an overwhelming feeling to say, ‘That seam, I lined it up.’ ”

With the freeway opening, the workers’ pride was perhaps only matched by commuters’ exuberance.

Late Monday, in time to be aired on 11 p.m. television news programs, Wilson, Mayor Richard Riordan, and federal Transportation Secretary Federico Pena held an impromptu news conference, preparing to wave the cars onto the freeway. Shoulder to shoulder, the dignitaries lined up across the eastbound lanes, each standing by a bright orange traffic cone.

Farther west, Marco Ruano, a Caltrans senior construction engineer, blocked eager motorists from spilling onto the freeway until he had received a signal that all was ready.

“It was like running with the bulls in Pamplona,” Ruano said.

As the cones were removed, the motorists surged forward, spinning up clouds of dust, honking and yelling. Television cameras lined the road and helicopters hovered overhead.

“I never thought that this community would get so excited over one freeway,” said Caltrans District Director Jerry Baxter. “We cuss these freeways, everybody does, but you take one away and we all feel a loss.”

Baxter and other experts believe that commuters will readily relinquish their carefully culled alternative routes and return to the Santa Monica, dubbed the world’s busiest freeway and one that Angelenos either love or hate.

“Most people will go back to what used to be,” said Genevieve Giuliano, associate professor of urban and regional planning at USC.

In fact, some motorists expressed dismay that the restored freeway returned so quickly to its clogged state.

“It was distressing to find it was like it used to be, a lot of single drivers in cars,” said Joe Lee, an attorney.

Michael Soloff, another attorney, was crestfallen for another reason. He had been enjoying the car-pool lanes that were installed shortly after the earthquake in an effort to keep traffic moving. His post-construction commute was longer, not shorter.

“I was among the minority of commuters who benefited from the way it was--I car-pooled,” he said.

To the disappointment of Pena--a proponent of car-pool lanes--and other federal officials, Caltrans officials stripped the lanes from the Santa Monica--an action that might imperil their return.

The car-pool lanes never quite caught on on the Santa Monica, where they had been tried 17 years ago with dismal results. On a typical, post-quake day, about 1,250 vehicles an hour drove the 4.5-mile car-pool lane on the Santa Monica. By comparison, on other Southland freeways, a successful car-pool lane--which is much longer in distance--usually draws more than 1,800 an hour.

Caltrans’ Baxter said the agency will continue to study the prospect of installing car-pool lanes and if enough community interest is expressed, officials would hold hearings. But Baxter said he is reluctant to set up a car-pool lane when it would mean commandeering a lane, depriving mixed-flow traffic of one lane.

The agency is also considering building a double-deck, similar to the one under construction on the Harbor Freeway, in which the top deck would be reserved for car pools. That type of structure would cost about $50 million per mile, Baxter said.

Frank E. Kruesi, federal assistant transportation secretary for policy, said elevated car-pool lanes “are extraordinarily expensive. There’s obviously a limit to what anybody can pay.”

Transportation officials face additional hurdles if they want to pursue a car-pool lane now that the freeway has been reopened, Kruesi said.

“Obviously, it’s a different situation after the Santa Monica reopened last night to go in there and say, ‘OK, now we’ve got traffic flowing, let’s talk about a (car-pool) lane.’ ” he said.

With the Santa Monica project completed, Caltrans awaits the finish of the quake-damaged freeways in the San Fernando Valley. Those projects, including the Antelope Valley, Golden State and Simi Valley freeways are expected to be done on time, from mid-May to mid-July, but probably not early.

“One down and four more to go,” Baxter said.

Times staff writer Alan Miller in Washington contributed to this story.

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