Construction Postponed Until December : Freeway Widening Project Delayed Again

For a third time, the long-awaited widening of the Ventura and Hollywood freeways has been delayed--this time until December--to allow traffic coordinators to refine plans for relieving congestion.

The three-year, $39-million widening project had been scheduled to begin in June.

But state Department of Transportation officials Monday said they have encountered unexpected delays in working out plans to keep traffic moving during construction.

The three-phase project includes the addition of one new lane in each direction on the freeways between Valley Circle Boulevard in Woodland Hills and the point at which the Hollywood Freeway crosses over Lankershim Boulevard near Universal City.

Also, several sound walls will be built, and large segments of pavement along the Ventura Freeway are to be resurfaced or reconstructed. Both freeways are sections of U.S. Highway 101.

Most of the traffic-planning efforts have focused on the stretch of the Ventura Freeway between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle boulevards, often called the “Woodland Hills bottleneck.”

Within the bottleneck, the freeway has just three lanes in each direction. West of Valley Circle, it widens to four lanes to Thousand Oaks. East of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, there are at least four--and in some cases five--lanes in each direction.

When the full project is completed in 1991, there will be five lanes in each direction from downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. There will be four lanes each way from Topanga Canyon to Thousand Oaks, where the freeway now narrows to three lanes each way.

Yuki Okuda, project engineer for widening of the bottleneck, said that traffic-handling plans have been substantially changed in recent months as a result of a series of meetings with Los Angeles city transportation engineers.

Among the changes, he said, is abandonment of a plan, outlined a year ago, to route five of the existing six lanes on one side of the median while one lane remained on the other during the widening.

Now, the plan is to route all six lanes on the same side of the median, Okuda said.

The rerouting, which will involve first the westbound and then the eastbound lanes, will last up to six months, he said. Three lanes will be maintained in each direction throughout the construction.

James Okazaki, transportation engineer with the city Department of Transportation, predicted that motorists will “find the plans that have been worked out will keep traffic flowing smoothly.”

Caltrans has earmarked nearly $2 million for electronic message signs, for a radio transmitter to broadcast information on bypass routes to motorists, and for signs advising drivers to avoid the construction area.

Okazaki said one key to the success of the traffic-management plan will be the effectiveness of signs aimed at persuading inbound motorists headed for Warner Center to leave the freeway before Valley Circle Boulevard.

The widening originally was to begin in mid-1985.

Previous delays have been attributed to the slow progress of design work and to the 11th-hour insistence by the Federal Highway Administration, which is paying 85% of the cost, that several overpasses be widened as part of the project.