MTA Panel Recommends 405/101 Interchange Plan

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority panel Thursday included $13.1 million in improvements to the San Diego-Ventura freeway interchange on a list of projects recommended to compete for state funding.

“This is a step forward,” said Los Angeles city councilman and MTA board member Hal Bernson. “At least we have consideration on it now. That’s more than we have gotten before.”

Bernson, along with County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich, who also sit on the MTA board, have been pushing for action on the highly congested interchange, which serves as a major route into and out of the San Fernando Valley.

Although Bernson said more immediate funding would have been preferred, he added, “At least it’s now in the mix. Caltrans should have done this a long time ago.”

The two proposed improvements to the interchange--an $8.5-million project to widen the connector between the northbound San Diego Freeway and the southbound Ventura Freeway, and a $4.6-million project to add an auxiliary lane to the San Diego Freeway--will go before the MTA board next Thursday, and if approved will be forwarded to local Caltrans officials.

Transportation officials in Sacramento will then make the decision on whether to fund the improvements, said Bob Cashin, MTA deputy executive officer for planning.

Cashin said he couldn’t guarantee the work would be funded, but “it would be a good step to get these approved. These recommendations carry some weight.”

Joel Bellman, Yaroslavsky’s spokesman, said there is optimism now that the interchange project has made the final list of projects the MTA is submitting to Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission.

But he said it is too early to assume the project is going to be funded.

“So far, we’re encouraged by the priority and focus that has been given to this. But we’ll have to wait and see what happens with Caltrans and the CTC,” Bellman said.

The three members of the MTA planning committee who were present, including Antonovich, voted unanimously to forward the list of recommendations to the MTA board, Cashin said.

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The committee acted after MTA staff members recommended approval of the work based on a technical analysis of traffic patterns in the region, combined with a cost-benefit analysis. The interchange made the staff cut because “these are high-volume, high-delay [routes], and the fix is low in cost,” Cashin said.

Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), who has been calling for improvements to the freeway intersection, said that “what the MTA failed to do was as important as what was done. The MTA did not identify the 405/101 as a priority, and MTA has continued to refused to commit MTA funds to the project.”

Also on the list of recommended improvements is a Long Beach Freeway project.

If the projects are funded, the money would be made available in fiscal year 2000, Cashin said.

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo contributed to this story.