Residents Hope to Head Off City Plan at the Pass

Krista Michaels knows what it’s like to feel trapped.

She can recall being stalled in the Cahuenga Pass for what seemed like hours on her way home, just a few hundred yards from her house.

The pass, where the Hollywood Freeway and Cahuenga and Barham boulevards converge, is one of the Southland’s most congested corridors during rush hour and is long overdue for improvements to ease the heavy traffic, officials say.

But a battle is shaping up over what should be done, with several powerful homeowners groups concerned that city and county officials will opt for widening the Barham Boulevard Bridge over the freeway.

Some residents have questioned whether two nearby movie studios, MCA/Universal and Warner Bros., are paying their fair share to alleviate the congestion they generate. Others complain that a nearby freeway interchange that was never completed is the real source of congestion on neighborhood streets.

“Widening the bridge is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg,” said Michaels, president of the Cahuenga Pass Property Owners Assn., which is spearheading the drive against the bridge project. “It doesn’t solve the real problem.”

The work would bring more commuters onto Barham, neighbors in the affluent area say, rather than route them onto the freeways, where they belong.

At the center of their concern is a joint effort by Los Angeles County and the cities of Los Angeles and Burbank to conduct a $1.5-million environmental impact study of present and future traffic conditions in the pass.

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The report will determine whether it makes sense to replace the current 48-foot-wide Barham Bridge, which crosses over the Hollywood Freeway in the pass, with a new, 80-foot-wide bridge. It will also consider other options, including widening several roads in the area.

Unofficial estimates for rebuilding the bridge range from $11 million to $35 million, officials say.

Cahuenga and Barham boulevards and the Hollywood Freeway are used by more than 300,000 vehicles coming through the pass each day, according to city transportation officials. Cahuenga is often used by motorists as an alternate when the freeway is congested, while Barham, which bisects two hillside residential neighborhoods, connects Hollywood with Burbank’s burgeoning Media District.

An estimated 80,000 of those vehicles travel on or near the Barham bridge, and officials say the surface streets are becoming as congested as the freeway.

William Lundgren, Burbank’s transportation administrator, said part of the problem is the lack of a complete interchange between the Ventura and Hollywood freeways. Congestion at that interchange “spills a lot of traffic onto this corridor, traffic it wasn’t meant to carry,” Lundgren said.

Michaels and other residents say they worry that the bridge replacement and widening is a done deal between city officials and MCA/Universal and Warner Bros., the two studios that abut the corridor.

Both companies are embarking on long-term redevelopment plans that call for millions of square feet of new office space. The projects promise to bring jobs and economic growth to the region, but could create even more traffic in adjoining neighborhoods.

Neither studio returned calls seeking comment.

Instead of widening the bridge, the residents want the county and the two cities to seriously look at other options, such as completing the Hollywood/Ventura freeway interchange, which has no east-south connector ramps, or building a tunnel from Forest Lawn Drive on the north through to Fountain Avenue in Hollywood on the south. With that option, motorists en route from Glendale, Burbank and other areas can bypass Barham and the Cahuenga Pass altogether.

“It’s not unthinkable,” insisted David Kegaries, president of the Cahuenga Pass Coalition, an association of 10 homeowner groups in the area, and a member of a citizens advisory panel set up by city officials to monitor the project.

“They have tunnels like the one we’re proposing in the Oakland area and in other parts of the country. We’re being told it would be too expensive, but no one is saying how much and no one is studying it.

“The homeowners want to address this as a regional traffic problem, but it is being looked at as a local issue,” said Kegaries. “It is premature to take a specific action on the bridge now. We have to look at these other alternatives and see what they would cost and whether they are doable.”

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But transportation officials insist they are looking seriously at more than just the Barham bridge. They say residents are jumping the gun.

Allyn Rifkin, chief of planning for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, said the environmental report will be completed later this year and there will be “ample opportunities” for residents to have a say before any traffic improvements are ultimately approved and built.

“What we’re looking at is trying to solve congestion problems in the corridor, not simply whether or not the bridge should be widened,” Rifkin said.

However, he said that widening the bridge could provide a short-term solution to gridlock in the area and provide “flexibility” to battle circulation problems.

“From the city’s viewpoint, I think we want to do both things. We want to pursue the long range, expensive stuff that would be an ultimate solution to the problem. But we also don’t want people to have to continue sitting in traffic now.”