3 Interchange Projects Won’t End the Gridlock

Three projects planned for the notorious Ventura-San Diego freeway interchange won’t eliminate congestion and will only make temporary fixes to one of the state’s most reviled traffic quagmires.

The freeway junction is way past its prime, but Caltrans and other transit officials say 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--that will be completed in the next eight years. But they will not reduce travel times for commuters, according to 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.”

With 551,000 vehicles squeezing through daily, the 101/405 interchange is the second-busiest in California. It was built in 1956 to handle 200,000 vehicles.

Caltrans concedes it simply cannot keep up with the region’s growth and its 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 summer 2003.

* Adding an extra lane to the northbound San Diego Freeway/eastbound Ventura Freeway 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 San Diego Freeway near the Sepulveda Boulevard offramp. A new onramp at Greenleaf Street is planned to take traffic directly onto the northbound San Diego Freeway, crossing under the connector to the freeway. That onramp will eliminate the need for motorists to merge left across two lanes. Along with a new ramp for Ventura Freeway access, the project will cost $36 million, with work to begin in summer 2004. Completion is expected in spring 2008.

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

The biggest conundrum is the increase each year in the number of motorists, according to traffic engineers. When Caltrans completes all three projects, the improvements will make room for more vehicles. But that larger volume still means tortoise speeds and logjams will continue.

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

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

Even the Getty Museum, perched high above the San Diego Freeway 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 also can be dangerous.

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

But some of the simplest and most cost-effective congestion-busting measures--such as charging tolls or closing onramps and offramps--are extremely 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 who have 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 instance, would enrage many.

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

The San Diego Freeway ramps at Greenleaf Street and Sepulveda Boulevard are less than half a mile from the junction, and engineers say these ramps are often the culprit in 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 Street onramp to the northbound San Diego Freeway. Only a ramp for the Ventura Freeway would remain.

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

Caltrans wants free-flowing highways; fewer ramps help accomplish this goal. The city’s 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 Freeway, plans called for a new bridge-like onramp that would whisk motorists up and past the nearby Sherman Oaks Galleria.

That would eliminate the hazard motorists now face when crossing two lanes to reach the northbound San Diego Freeway.

But the high-flying ramp would have blocked views from the Sherman Oaks 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 under the interchange to connect to the San Diego Freeway. Views for the Galleria will be preserved, but the cost jumped $12 million, to $33 million.

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

About 7,500 cars use the ramp each day to reach the northbound San Diego Freeway. By 2020, about 10,000 cars are expected to use the ramp.

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

Eliminating the 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 occurred with a proposal to close the Ventura Freeway’s Haskell Avenue offramp. The goal was simple: test how well the ramp closure would improve stagnant flow through the interchange. And also put the brakes on morning commuters who exit the Haskell Avenue ramp as a freeway shortcut, zipping through city streets, only to get back on the San Diego Freeway farther south in the Sepulveda Pass.

But Caltrans backed off after intense local opposition.

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

But others, such as former Assemblyman Wally Knox, who once lived near the Sepulveda Boulevard and Greenleaf Street onramps and represented the area, said removing ramps is too disruptive.

“Freeways aren’t built to make traffic engineers happy,” Knox 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 557,670 vehicles daily will be able to squeak through the interchange. But even Caltrans acknowledges that future vehicle volume growth 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 motorists who will try the interchange for the first time as well as former users who will dare to return, according to Choe and USC’s Moore.

The result: More vehicles will jostle through the junction, yet 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’ forecasted growth, no project can guarantee a constant 35 mph freeway speed anywhere, former Assemblyman Richard Katz said.

Instead of fixing the interchange, commuter behavior needs to be changed, Katz said. Motorists must switch to improved public transit, or stay on city streets for short trips after better street signalization and left-turn lanes are built.

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

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Facelift at 101/405 Interchange

The interchange of the Ventura and San Diego freeways consistently rates among the nation’s worst junctions. It is currently the state’s second busiest with 551,000 cars squeezing throught it daily. Built in 1965 and designed to handle 200,000 cars, the clogged confluences of the 101/405 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.