Funds OKd for Work on Freeway Junction
The area’s most notoriously congested freeway interchange--the confluence of the San Diego and Ventura freeways--is expected to be upgraded soon under a spending plan approved this week by the California Transportation Commission.
The commission voted Wednesday to include $7.9 million in a $375-million augmentation of a six-year, $9-billion capital improvement budget for two improvements to the traffic-jammed interchange. Overall, the freeway project is expected to cost $16 million.
The additional funds, championed by Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), came in a package of proposed transportation projects sent to the commission by Gov. Gray Davis.
The improvements are contingent on significant matching funds from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The plans include adding a lane on the northbound San Diego Freeway from Mulholland Drive to the Ventura Boulevard offramp and adding a second lane connecting the northbound San Diego Freeway to the eastbound Ventura Freeway.
Caltrans has already started design work on the two projects at the insistence of Davis, said Bob Remen, the commission’s chief of staff.
The target date for completion is 2002.
The San Diego-Ventura Freeway interchange was not the only local transportation project to receive a funding boost. The augmentation included $12 million to build a new freeway offramp of the Golden State Freeway at Empire Avenue in Burbank.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
