Caltrans Moves Up Date to Expand Busy Interchange

Caltrans officials announced Friday that they will speed up improvements at the continually clogged interchange of the San Diego and Ventura freeways by more than a year.

Groundbreaking on the project, which is intended to ease congestion, could move up from late 2002 to early 2001, said Tony V. Harris, head of the local Caltrans office.

The change was spurred by a request from newly elected Gov. Gray Davis to accelerate work statewide on road projects. While supporters of the project welcomed the announcement, they said work should begin even sooner.

“This is far, far, far too long to get it up and running,” said Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), who was recently appointed to a special committee to oversee ways to ease congestion on California’s crowded roads. “We need to do better.”

Caltrans officials will immediately begin working on an environmental review and design plan for the project, which will add one lane to the connector between the northbound San Diego Freeway and the southbound Ventura Freeway and another lane to the San Diego Freeway from Mulholland Drive to Ventura Boulevard.

Normally, officials first do an environmental review, then proceed with designing the freeway. By doing both at the same time, Caltrans is taking a risk. If the environmental review turns up problems, a full-blown environmental analysis would be triggered, meaning two more years of work and possible changes to the design plans.

But Harris said he considered the risk minimal when compared with the benefit of better traffic flow through the interchange, which was built in 1956 and now carries more than 550,000 vehicles daily, making it the state’s fourth busiest.