Freeway Fixes May Not Cure Gridlock

A trio of projects planned for the notoriously congested 101-405 freeway interchange won’t eliminate congestion and will provide only temporary relief to one of the state’s most reviled traffic quagmires, transit officials said.

The junction of the Ventura and San Diego freeways is way past its prime, they added.

Replacement is unrealistic because of the restricted space, the number of homes and businesses that would have to be condemned, and a price tag exceeding $1 billion.

That leaves only the three improvement plans costing $50 million to be completed in the next seven years. Together, they will not reduce travel times for commuters passing through the interchange at all, according to interviews with engineers, transportation officials and politicians.

“All we are doing is putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding artery,” said David Fleming, a former state transportation commissioner. “It will be very difficult at best.”

The junction is like a huge, pulsing heart, straining under the bloated arteries of traffic swirling in and around it.

With 551,000 cars squeezing through daily, it is the second-busiest interchange in California. It was built in 1956 to handle 200,000.

The California Department of Transportation admits that it simply cannot keep up with the region’s growth and reliance on vehicles.

“It’s about the fourth bypass surgery before it dies,” said Tom Choe, Caltrans chief of freeway operations for the region.

The three projects are:

* Building an extra lane on the northbound San Diego Freeway from Mulholland Drive to the Greenleaf Street offramp, a $6.6-million project that started early this year and is to be completed in the summer of 2003.

* Adding a lane to the northbound 405-eastbound 101 connector, a $7.8-million project set to break ground in October; completion is expected in September 2003.

* Closing a gap by adding a lane on the northbound 405 near the Sepulveda Boulevard offramp. A new onramp at Greenleaf Street is planned to take traffic directly onto the northbound 405, crossing under the freeway connector. It eliminates the need for motorists to merge left across two lanes. Along with a new ramp for 101 access, the project also will eliminate the Ventura Boulevard onramp. It will cost $36 million, with work to begin in summer 2004. Completion is expected in the spring of 2008.

This spring, Caltrans also expects to complete the $20-million carpool lane on the southbound San Diego between the interchange and Waterford Street.

The biggest problem ahead is the increase each year in the number of motorists, the traffic engineers say. When Caltrans completes all three projects, the improvements will make room for more cars, but that larger volume still means the tortoise speeds and logjams will continue.

“It improves the situation for the short-term basis, but the growth in population will bring us back to what we have now,” Allen M. Lawrence, chairman of the state Transportation Commission, said of the project.

Don’t tell that to Jo Sherman.

On a recent early morning, the Northridge resident was crawling at 5 mph on the southbound San Diego near Sherman Oaks.

“This is quick,” chirped Sherman while commuting to her UCLA job with a co-worker. “At least we are going. Some days you just sit in the lane.”

At peak rush hours, traffic creeps along at such an aggravating pace that Caltrans flunked the interchange, slapping much of it with F ratings, including an F2, its second worst, which means traffic is at a stop-and-go pace for up to three hours.

Even the Getty Center, perched high above the San Diego in Brentwood, pokes fun in an ad: “Coming here is as easy as heading up the 405. But don’t let that discourage you.”

It can also be dangerous.

Last year, the California Highway Patrol recorded more than 1,000 crashes at or near the interchange.

Some of the simplest and most cost-effective congestion-busting measures--such as charging tolls or closing onramps and offramps--are intensely unpopular with residents, businesses and politicians, many transit experts said.

Caltrans, one transit expert said, is hamstrung by community and political demands that checkmate the agency’s ability to provide pure engineering solutions.

The state transit agency can’t solve problems from a strict engineering perspective, said James Moore, a USC associate professor of civil engineering and public policy and management. It must answer to powerful elected officials with large and vocal constituencies.

If it were a corporation, Caltrans could make vastly different decisions, Moore said. “And in certain respects, the transportation program would perform better, but in other respects, the public would be profoundly dissatisfied.”

Eliminating freeway ramps, for example, would enrage many.

Federal guidelines require that no ramps be built closer than one mile from an existing interchange, to encourage faster traffic flows without constant merging.

The 405 ramps at Greenleaf and Sepulveda are less than half a mile from the junction, and engineers say they are often the culprit, spurring fender benders and the long line of brake lights that back up the hill toward Mulholland Drive.

As recently as 1997, Caltrans briefly floated the idea of doing away with the Greenleaf onramp to the northbound 405. Only a ramp for the Ventura would remain.

The debate over the onramp highlights a little-noticed fact of commuting life: Caltrans and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation disagree on how to steer future patterns of regional commuting.

Political Pressure Alters Ramp’s Design

Caltrans wants free-flowing highways; fewer ramps help accomplish that. The city Department of Transportation wants the same for its streets; plenty of freeway onramps help transfer street traffic to highways.

Once the decision was made to improve, rather than close, the access ramp to the northbound San Diego, state plans called for a new bridge-like onramp that would whisk motorists up and past the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

That would eliminate the hazard motorists now face of crossing two lanes just to reach the 405 northbound.

The high-flying ramp would have blocked views from the Galleria, itself undergoing a renovation and anxious to please a major new tenant, Warner Bros.’ Animation Division. The Galleria, and several politicians supporting its owners and tenants, pressured Caltrans for an alternative.

In the end, Caltrans proposed a ramp that will cross under the interchange to connect to the San Diego. Views for the Galleria will be preserved, but the cost jumped $12 million, to $36 million.

That change angered many residents who don’t think the number of motorists who will use the ramp justifies the cost.

About 7,500 cars now enter the ramp each day to reach the northbound 405. By the year 2020, about 10,000 cars are expected to use it.

It’s “a pathetic statement about Caltrans,” said Sherman Oaks resident Tom Grant.

Eliminating the existing ramp will improve interchange flow, but building the costly under-crossing ramp, Grant lamented, panders to “motorists’ apparently inalienable travel and access rights.”

That’s what happened with a proposal to close the Haskell Avenue offramp of the Ventura. The goal was simple: test how well closure would improve stagnant flow through the interchange. And put the brakes on morning commuters who take the Haskell offramp as a freeway shortcut, zipping through city streets, only to get back on the 405 farther south in the Sepulveda Pass.

Caltrans backed off after intense local opposition.

“It all made sense. We voted for the temporary closure to try it out,” said Haskell resident Cher Huber, who is tired of 50-mph drivers cutting through her neighborhood. “And I’m thoroughly teed off that Caltrans . . . did not go forward. It was an inexpensive way to fix a problem.”

Others, like former Assemblyman Wally Knox, who once lived near the Sepulveda and Greenleaf onramps and represented the area, said removing ramps is too disruptive.

“Freeways aren’t built to make traffic engineers happy,” he said. “We call on them to solve real people’s problems. Once you have built a major freeway, you have made decisions that are very unchangeable.”

When all three projects are completed in 2008, traffic engineers estimate that 557,670 cars daily will be able to squeak through the interchange. Even Caltrans acknowledges that increasing traffic will eventually cancel out the congestion relief.

Any benefits will be short-lived because of what’s known in transportation vernacular as “latent demand”--the unknown number of new motorists who will try the interchange for the first time as well as former users who will dare to return, said Choe and USC’s Moore.

More Motorists Will Take to Freeways

The result: More cars will jostle through the junction, but current users will remain stuck in the same heavy traffic that they must slog through now.

“The fix that’s being done now is a fix that would have worked 20 years ago. It won’t take care of the volume today,” Fleming said. Motorists may go through faster, but it won’t be 55 or 60 mph, he predicted.

In fact, officials decline to estimate what the speeds will be at the interchange when the projects are finished.

With Los Angeles’ forecast growth, no project can guarantee a constant 35-mph freeway speed anywhere, said former Assemblyman Richard Katz.

Instead of fixing the interchange, officials should work to change commuter behavior, Katz said. Motorists must switch to improved public transit, or stay on city streets for short trips after better street signaling and left turn lanes are built.

“If you are going just three or four offramps on the freeway,” Katz said, “you are messing up the freeway system. It wasn’t designed for that.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Working on 101/405 Interchange

The clogged confluence of the Ventura and San Diego freeways will undergo a $50-million trio of projects. But Caltrans and state and local officials caution that the fixes are temporary at best, given the region’s unabated growth and reliance on vehicles.