Millions Added to Improve 405-101 Interchange

The San Fernando Valley’s most notoriously congested freeway interchange, the confluence of the San Diego and Ventura freeways, should soon be upgraded under a spending plan approved this week by the California Transportation Commission.

The powerful commission, which oversees spending on state transportation projects, voted Wednesday to include $7.9 million for two improvements to the traffic-jammed interchange as part of a $375-million augmentation of a six-year, $9-billion capital improvement budget.

The boost, which had been 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, which are contingent on significant matching funds from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, are 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. They are expected to cost roughly $16 million overall.

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 also included $12 million to build a new freeway offramp to the Golden State Freeway at Empire Avenue in Burbank.