Gridlock Looms in Antelope Valley

In the high desert, amid the open spaces and blowing tumbleweeds, the jam-packed highways of the Antelope Valley seem as out of place as Joshua trees in downtown Los Angeles.

But the increasingly big-city-like congestion is no mirage.

With the region’s population of 400,000 expected to triple within 20 years, transportation officials are scrambling to head off a crisis on the valley’s roads and highways.

“It’s like a little Mt. Vesuvius,” Palmdale City Councilman Rick Norris said.

The problem has become more urgent as pressure mounts to reopen and expand Palmdale Airport. Los Angeles World Airports, which owns the airport, wants it to eventually pick up some of the passenger load from Los Angeles International Airport.

In the next few months, the Los Angeles Airport Commission is expected to grant a right of way allowing the California Department of Transportation to construct a 5.3-mile expressway that would connect Palmdale Airport to the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Caltrans hopes to complete the $165-million expressway by 2010. The agency still needs $140 million.

The six-lane expressway would feed into the proposed High Desert Corridor, a 65-mile network of highways that would cross the valley.

The corridor would provide an east-west alternative to the Pearblossom Highway, starting from the Antelope Valley Freeway and stretching to Victorville in San Bernardino County.

It is far from breaking ground. The final price tag might exceed $1 billion, and only about $36 million has been allocated so far, Caltrans project manager Abdi Saghafi said. More funds could become available from Proposition 42, last week’s successful ballot measure that dedicates state sales taxes on gasoline to transportation projects.

At the earliest, the corridor likely would not be completed for 20 years, Saghafi said.

The corridor would also carry traffic to Palmdale Airport, which has not had commercial service since 1998.

Officials are in discussions with five airlines, and commercial flights could resume by the end of the year, Norris said.

LAX serves about 61 million passengers a year. By 2025, that number is expected to grow to 78 million, said Jim Ritchie, deputy executive director for Los Angeles World Airports, which also runs the Van Nuys and Ontario airports.

Palmdale Airport is expected to serve 1.7 million passengers by 2025, Ritchie said, but for that to happen the region’s highway system must improve. “Ground transportation is critical for the success of an airport,” he added.

Plans also are being developed to widen the two-lane Pearblossom Highway, known as the “Highway of Death” because of its steep accident rate.

Caltrans expects to complete that project by 2005.

“Every elected official is working desperately to relieve the kind of congestion we have,” said Lancaster Mayor Frank C. Roberts, who is a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

The officials have been lobbying the California High Speed Rail Authority to lay tracks in the Antelope Valley. The authority is planning a high-speed line from Sacramento to San Diego and will decide whether to route it through Palmdale or the Grapevine.

If Palmdale isn’t chosen, “we’re going to be drowning in people and cars” from the region’s ballooning population, said Jerry Epstein, a member of the rail agency and former chairman of the California Transportation Commission.

Another idea, now on ice, is a decades-old proposal to bore a 15.5-mile auto tunnel through the San Gabriel Mountains from Palmdale to La Canada Flintridge. A recent study concluded the project could cost up to $2 billion, which makes it unfeasible, Norris said.

The airport expressway would not require tunneling, but it would plow through the Unity Church of the Antelope Valley. That doesn’t bother the Rev. Al Johnson. He said his flock of about 100 is outgrowing the sanctuary and needs to move. The church members also strongly support any effort to improve transportation, he said.

“We need that airport in terms of growth and we need that [expressway],” Johnson said.