Forecast Calls for Detours and Good Chance of Delays

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.

Street Smart does not usually indulge in prognostication. But today--in honor of Labor Day--we make an exception with a special-edition forecast.

A big, ugly, long-lived storm is brewing in Ventura that will affect travel plans for the next two to five years of your commute.

Street Smart predicts a strong front of bulldozers moving in soon after Jan. 1, followed by a dense, slower-moving pocket of road-building crews.

The front will settle around eastern Valentine Road in Ventura, and spread to the greater Victoria Avenue interchange of the Ventura Freeway, causing sporadic lane closures and dust clouds.

Traffic delays are forecast, with a strong chance of creeping and honking in the early morning and late afternoon, and a slight possibility of fender-benders and strobing blue lights.

After about 18 months, the storm is expected to lighten considerably. But by that time, the dark cloud will already have spread to the west to settle on the Seaward Avenue overpass.

Then it will shift back toward the east in 2000, when the Ventura Freeway bridge over the Santa Clara River will become partly cloggy with a strong chance of rush-hour frustration.

“Everybody talks about the weather,” a wise old American once said. “But nobody does anything about it.”

Well, Street Smart believes that if you pack an umbrella at the very least, you might not get so wet.

So here’s to the brave reader who asked for the best protection you can carry--information:

Dear Street Smart:

Can you give us daily Victoria Avenue commuters the status on the Ventura Freeway and Victoria interchange construction? Also, are you going to publish a map with the column detailing the construction?

And what is the status of the Johnson Drive-Ventura Freeway and the Seaward Avenue-Ventura Freeway interchange projects?

David Woodward

Ventura

Dear Readers:

Take a deep breath. Maybe some notes, too. This will be tricky.

The 18-month, $15.5-million project is all in the hands of Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani.

Good hands they are too. Lalani won 17 Engineer of the Year awards in 1995 from his peers, who recently elected him to be international vice president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers for 1998, and plan to promote him to the president’s post in 1999.

Lalani says the work will begin in January, as crews build a new Valentine Road that bends to the south of its current route by about 200 feet (see map). The new route will serve as a big parking lot for heavy equipment during much of the project.

About the same time, crews will begin filling in the gap between the northbound and southbound Ventura Freeway overpasses crossing Victoria Avenue.

They will build new bridge sections into the median, making the overpass one large structure.

Then they will remove the barriers, and detour all southbound traffic onto the newly paved median while beginning work on the southbound bridge.

During the detour, crews will shore up the southbound overpass and carve out one new lane in each direction along Victoria beneath it.

Then they will restore southbound traffic to the rebuilt bridge, detour northbound freeway traffic onto the median and repeat the process for the northbound bridge.

Caltrans requires the work on the overpass to be done smoothly enough to allow traffic to move no slower than 60 mph along the freeway there, so the city is planning to keep all six freeway lanes open, Lalani says.

“We’ll have signs on the freeway and signs on Victoria telling people, ‘Stay away from here if you can,’ ” Lalani said. “When we start putting up signs, [motorists] need to pay attention to those. When we start shutting down lanes under the bridge, it’s going to affect them.”

Meanwhile, after Valentine Road is rerouted, crews will build a new southbound freeway offramp that connects directly to it west of Victoria.

Once the new offramp is open, the old offramp will be closed and overlaid with a new southbound onramp--eliminating the need for the current southbound onramp signal that makes cruising Victoria such a world-class hassle.

The project will also lengthen the northbound Victoria Avenue offramp and add a lane to the northbound onramp.

And they will move the signal at Walker Street north by a few dozen yards to control the reopened west end of Old Ventura Boulevard.

What does all this mean for your morning commute?

Choose an alternate route, and it should not be a problem for freeway through-travelers, except for occasional rush-hour stacking on the freeway offramps.

But traffic on Victoria and Valentine will be problematic at best. Even an expert like Lalani cannot say for sure exactly how bad things will be.

And that worries local merchants.

Salzer’s Records and Salzer’s Video will make the best of it by doing some remodeling of their own, says owner Jim Salzer.

“We’re looking at doing an addition, as well as offering a few surprises. It’ll probably be interesting for our customers to come in and see the progress as it shapes up,” he said. “We’re girded for it, we’re ready for anything. It’s just one of those things. It’s important for the community and the public good, so you just grit your teeth and hope to withstand whatever happens.”

The folks at Victoria Texaco are less hopeful for the short-term forecast.

“The intersection’s bad as it is, and we’re worried about losing a lot of business” during construction, said Kyle Fuchs, assistant manager of the station at Valentine and Victoria. “All that stuff’s going to kill us.”

But when all the dust has settled, the intersection will operate a lot smoother, Fuchs says. “I’ve seen the blueprints, and it’ll be a lot better. . . . I just hope they hurry and get it done fast.”

The Seaward bridge-widening project will begin next year, and in the fall of 1999 construction crews will rebuild the south end of Johnson Drive so that it burrows under the Union Pacific tracks and connects with Leland Street.

NEXT: Little white lies.

Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart answers your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times, 93 S. Chestnut St., Ventura, 93001. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. E-mail us at mack.reed@latimes.com or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In any case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.