Asphalt Bungle : Strike to Delay Paving Work on Valley’s Roscoe Boulevard by Almost Three Months

One of the most hated signs in the San Fernando Valley has to be the one put up by the city on Roscoe Boulevard, near Laurel Canyon Boulevard, that says construction on Roscoe will end on “8-25-95.”

That date has come and gone, but motorists stuck in rush-hour traffic at that intersection Wednesday morning had plenty of time to read it. And can plan on reading it for at least another two months.

Resurfacing the 2.5-mile stretch of Roscoe, which has been going on since February, is so far behind schedule that it will continue until Nov. 15--and that’s not counting possible rain delays, city officials say.

In the meantime, much of the key section of Roscoe from about Woodman Avenue on the west to Laurel Canyon Boulevard on the east will continue to be reduced from four lanes to two. Commuters, residents and business owners in the area will endure at least two more months of stop-and-go traffic, rush-hour jams, blocked driveways and overheated tempers.

“How can they allow this to happen?” asked Ken Dean, a local architect and interior designer who has waged a one-man crusade against the repaving delays. “We pay our taxes, and what they do is make our street dangerous for months and months. It’s a nightmare.”

What really angered locals was that for more than a month during construction, no work was done on the boulevard, even though the barriers restricting traffic remained in place.

The main problem, according to Valley District engineer Ed Howell of the city’s Department of Public Works, is that the $1.2-million resurfacing project was contracted out to a company plagued by recent work stoppages.

“They informed us that the asphalt workers they use went on strike,” Howell said. But he noted that city street projects done in-house have not been affected by the general strike of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which began in late July.

He said that work on the Roscoe project, which was originally expected to take 160 working days, was halted Aug. 1 until the company--Sulley-Miller of Orange County--finally managed to find replacement asphalt workers Sept. 11.

During the work stoppage, Howell said, his office considered taking down the barriers to allow traffic to flow safely, but decided against it.

“We would have had to sandblast off the temporary striping on the road and then re-stripe it for regular traffic,” he said. “The cost would have been about $100,000. And we didn’t know when the strike might be settled.”

Howell said the Roscoe project was so extensive that it went beyond the normal duties of the city’s Street Maintenance Department. “The pavement was shot to the point where it was beyond resurfacing. It had to be removed and replaced,” he said. “This project has been on the books for six or seven years.”

But the prospect of a newly smoothed-out street doesn’t mollify Dean, who after weeks of getting caught in traffic jams while taking his son to school was determined to get to the bottom of the delays.

“I think I called at least five city agencies before I could find anyone who could tell me about what was going on,” Dean said. “It’s not just inconvenience, it’s a safety issue.”

Howell agreed that there had been safety problems, mostly because frustrated drivers would pull into the center lane reserved for left turns to get ahead of traffic. “We have asked the police to check on the area more,” he said.

Some of the businesses along Roscoe Boulevard are worried about their economic health. One of the most adversely affected has been Ricardo’s Burgers, a fast-food stand just east of Arleta Avenue that opened three weeks ago.

At first, at least the main driveways to the business were open. But now both are blocked and the only way to reach the drive-through window is via an adjacent gas station.

On Wednesday morning, waitress Natalia Masquera looked forlorn.

“At first, business was very, very good, but now just look,” she said. “There is no one.

“We can’t go on like this very long.”