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405 project questions? Ask away

May 17, 2010

If the prospect of three years of construction on the 405 Freeway has you concerned, curious, or both, here’s a chance to get some answers about the project directly from the man in charge.

Metro’s Mike Barbour, who’s heading up the effort to build a 10-mile northbound carpool lane through the Sepulveda Pass, will be answering questions during an online chat on Wednesday, May 26 from noon to 1 p.m.

The session is called “Living with the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project.” Metro asks that you submit your questions in advance, and says queries under 300 characters will get priority during the session.

Full information on the session is here, along with a project overview in which Barbour says that widening and improving the freeway—one of the nation’s busiest—is as “challenging as performing heart surgery on a patient while she runs a marathon.” The job’s expected to be completed by 2013.

Posted 5-17-10

Read More Stories: By Car | The 405 Report | Transportation

Demolition time on Sunset

May 5, 2010

When the Sunset Boulevard bridge overpass to the 405 Freeway comes down, don’t expect a Vegas-style, imploding-the-Sands-Hotel kind of spectacle. This will be more of a chunk-by-chunk demolition—what one Metro official likens to taking apart a giant Lego structure.

But this is no child’s play.

The $1.034 billion I-405 Sepulveda Pass widening project enters a challenging new phase this week as workers prepare to demolish portions of the Sunset Bridge, one of three overpasses to be taken down and replaced with wider, upgraded structures in coming months. Up next are bridges at Skirball Center Drive (work slated to begin this fall) and Mulholland (scheduled to begin after the Skirball work starts.)

Although advance work on the Sunset bridge project starts Friday, the precise date for the demolition is up in the air, with the start likely to come this month, depending on how the prep work goes.

The bridge will have four lanes open to traffic during construction—two in each direction—but the prospect of the inevitable noise, dirt and traffic disruption has many in this tony neighborhood on edge. Adding to the concern is the beginning of work next week on a city Department of Water and Power water pipeline project that, for the next six months, will close a block-long stretch of Church Lane heading south from Sunset.

At the Luxe Hotel Sunset Boulevard, one of two upscale hotels located in the midst of the coming action, employees are used to staging enormous wedding and bar mitzvah receptions in the 300-guest ballroom and catering to the needs of high-profile guests reported to include celebrities such as Charlize Theron and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

But operating a hotel with two massive construction projects just outside the door?

“We are actually, honestly, scared,” says Seth Horowitz, who until recently was general manager of the Luxe, site of a community meeting earlier this week for members of local neighborhood associations seeking information on the projects. Metro representatives have met with officials of the Luxe and its nearby counterpart, Hotel Angeleno, and promised to stay in close communication to ensure that construction doesn’t interfere with upcoming big events at the hotels.

Even at the best of times, getting around the area can be tough. Horowitz said a guest at a “very important event” recently told him about battling rush hour traffic for 1-1/2 hours to reach the hotel from Paul Revere Middle School near Mandeville Canyon Road—less than three miles away. “That’s before they cut down the bridge,” Horowitz says.

Eventually, that kind of surface street congestion should be helped by the freeway project, whose primary objective is to create a 10-mile northbound carpool lane on the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass—one of the most heavily-traveled corridors in the country. The rebuilt Sunset Bridge will be upgraded seismically and will be wider—120 feet, compared to 90 feet now—with 8 lanes instead of the current six and “higher capacity on- and off-ramps,” according to Metro.

The new capacity could also help with concerns about freeway-bound cars backing up onto local streets. As for the long-running issue of freeway-ramp meter timing, a pilot program set to begin May 21 will examine whether turning the meters off during construction will improve traffic conditions.

Mike Barbour, Metro’s top executive on the project, acknowledges the area’s traffic congestion problems and the fact that residents will “kind of have to plan their lives around this work” for a while.” He says his agency is working to communicate alternative routes and detours, and to respond, whenever possible, to community suggestions for improving the situation. “If it becomes a complete mess out there,” he says, “obviously we’re going to correct that.”

More than anything, though, he says the goal is to get the contractor, Kiewit Pacific Co., to complete the work as quickly as possible. “Our big push is going to be to get it done sooner,” Barbour says.

In the meantime Metro has established a page dedicated to the Sunset Bridge demolition on its website and also is experimenting with an array of social media to get the word out. “I tweeted 14 times today, just because today there happened to be a lot of lane closures,” says Ned J. Racine, the project’s “new media officer.” In addition to Twitter and Facebook, the latest tool in Racine’s lineup is Nixle, an ad-free notification site used by law enforcement and other government agencies to communicate highly localized information to members of the public.

But cyber tools are not going to be enough to get the job done in the real world, even in this highly desirable corner of the real world, dotted as it is with such internationally known locales as the Getty, UCLA, Brentwood and Bel-Air. So for the demolition work, they’re bringing in a destruction tool called the “hoe ram”—a crane with a massive jackhammer attached. The contractor is “basically going to break the bridge apart with a huge jackhammer,” says Mark Van Gessel, Metro’s manager for the Sunset segment.

The work will take place in phases—between 6 and 9 nights of demolition followed by 10 months of construction on the southern end of the bridge, with a repeat of the same pattern on the northern side when the first half is finished. In all, some 12,000 tons of concrete will come down, to be pulverized onsite and recycled as “crushed miscellaneous base” and used as a building material on the project.

Segments of the freeway will be closed when demo work is taking place on the bridge overhead, as will streets including Sunset and Sepulveda. However, the work will be staggered so that the freeway and Sepulveda will not be closed at the same time.

Workers will start preparing for the job on Friday night, closing Sunset Boulevard and on-ramps near the Hotel Angeleno at 9 p.m. to establish new lane markings and a work zone to be completed by 6 a.m. Monday morning. Then they’ll start preparing the bridge for demolition: securing a major 34-inch water line inside the bridge; removing and bagging asbestos from around piping; and taking out the original wood forms so that the concrete can be recycled.

Cori Solomon, president of the Brentwood Glen Association, organized the meeting at the Luxe Hotel this week and invited her counterparts in the Westwood Hills Residents Association to take part as well. (Metro’s presentation is here, with slide 11 detailing Friday’s work.)

About 200 people showed up to voice concerns about noise, the double-whammy of the Church Lane water main work taking place at the same time the bridge job is underway, and the potential for construction to send new “cut through” traffic onto traditionally quiet residential streets.

Solomon, who’s lived in the neighborhood nearly 24 years, says her goal throughout the project is to “keep the community aware” and to find ways to make the situation “semi-livable” for residents.

“The board understands that it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a mess,” she says. “The thing is, it’s going to happen. You can’t stop it.”

And a philosophical attitude helps. “In the scheme of things, this freeway construction is a small speck in your life,” Solomon says. “In the end, it will hopefully be a little better, a little nicer.”

The project hotline number is (213) 922-3665. The next community meeting is scheduled for May 20, from 6-8 p.m. at The Getty. A fact sheet on the project, including a list of frequently asked questions, is here.

Posted 5-05-10

Read More Stories: By Car | The 405 Report | Transportation

What’s up with the 405 project?

February 18, 2010

A community meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 23, to provide updates on the project to add a carpool lane to the northbound 405 through the Sepulveda Pass.

Learn how the work is going—despite a series of rain delays just as work began—and find out what’s coming next.

The meeting will be held at The Getty, from 6-8 p.m. Full details are here.

Posted 2/18/10

Read More Stories: By Car | The 405 Report

Meet Metro’s man on the 405 project

January 12, 2010

It wasn’t that long ago that Mike Barbour was in the midst of rocket attacks as an Air Force reservist working on projects like rebuilding bombed out bridges or constructing temporary aircraft hangars in Iraq.

Now he’s under another kind of pressure, of the diplomatic and logistical variety, as Metro’s top guy on the 405 Sepulveda Pass widening project—a multi-jurisdictional, three-year undertaking that will create a 10-mile northbound carpool lane between the Santa Monica (10) and the Ventura (101) freeways.

Along the way, it will have a profound impact on commuters traveling one of the nation’s most heavily traveled freeways, and also will significantly affect the surrounding neighborhoods and businesses. It’s a huge job that requires deft coordination among agencies and departments and a straight-shooting approach to communicating with the area’s well-informed–and often vocal–residents.

Enter Mike Barbour.

Barbour, 56, who joined Metro just a year ago, figures it was his unique set of highway design and construction experiences—and not his time in a war zone—that made him the right man for the job of overseeing every facet of the complex project.

Still, it couldn’t hurt.

At his first meeting with representatives of homeowner groups, he encountered a contentious crowd but ended up making a positive impression.

“He kept his cool,” says Milton Miller, past president of the Bel-Air Association and the homeowner group’s representative on the Community Advisory Committee that is working with Metro on the 405 project. “He acted like a gentleman. He seems calm and measured, and pays attention. My impressions are positive. He didn’t try to hog the presentation and say, ‘This is about me.’”

Now, as eight weeks of night work begin on the 405, setting the stage for construction to begin in earnest in March, Barbour finds himself at the center of a high profile and high stakes enterprise that will be closely watched across the region.

The inaugural construction phase will change life as we know it on the already congested 405. “It’s a big deal…The people that drive this, that live there, haven’t been impacted and now they’re going to be impacted.”

The impact hits on Wednesday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m., when, weather permitting, crews will start delineating new, narrower lanes on the freeway to accommodate a construction zone.

The first full freeway closure is set to occur after midnight, in the early morning hours of Jan. 14, with all lanes scheduled to reopen by 6 a.m. [Updated 1/13/10: The start of work on the 405 is being delayed for a second night because of rain. Learn more here.] Updates also are being posted on Twitter. In addition, Metro has expanded its community relations staff on the project and has established a hotline for public inquiries, (213) 922-3665.

In dealing with the community, Barbour says, the important thing is to stick to the facts in the project plan. “All the people on the Westside understand what’s going on,” he says. “You need to be very straightforward.”

At monthly meetings with the Community Advisory Committee, Barbour says he tackles “every issue under the sun,” including such questions as: “Are you closing my off ramp? Are you affecting me? Can emergency equipment get through?” (For that last question, he brought in police and fire representatives to explain how they will respond.)

There are also meetings for the community as a whole, such as an open house planned for Jan. 20 at the Westwood Recreation Center.

The project, a partnership of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), is expected to cost $1.034 billion, with $189.9 million coming from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009. The rest will flow from state and other federal sources.

Barbour’s job, which pays $200,000 annually, involves coordinating the work of all agencies with a role in the project—including Caltrans, the city Department of Transportation and L.A. County.

“It’s really trying to knock down the barriers for the contractor (Kiewit Pacific Co.),” says Barbour, whose official title is Executive Officer, Highway Project Management. “One of our main concerns is keeping the project on schedule.”

He’s a true believer in the importance of completing the northbound carpool lane through the Sepulveda Pass and creating an unbroken high-occupancy vehicle route from the Orange County line north to the San Fernando Valley.

“The HOV lane is a really big impact,” he says. “Three hundred thousand people come through there daily.”

Metro estimates that daily carpool commuters could save about 10 minutes a day—50 minutes a week—when the project is completed in 2013. “It’s not a lot for an individual,” Barbour says, “but for 300,000 people—that’s a significant amount of money and time.”

Carpool lanes aren’t just a job for Barbour; they’re a passion.

He says he often grabs a colleague to travel with him so he can take advantage of the carpool lanes on the 105 or 405 as he shuttles between his main office at the Howard Hughes Center near the airport, the job site in Brentwood and Metro’s downtown Los Angeles offices. And when he’s in the carpool lane, “I can just blow by everybody on the 105.” (Get it? He likes carpool lanes.)
Before joining Metro, Barbour, who grew up in Southern California, worked for 8 years as a consultant in the private sector. Earlier, he put in 18 years at Caltrans, including a stint as acting deputy director for design for District 7, which includes Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

If you’ve ever been on the 110/Adams Boulevard HOV lane near downtown Los Angeles, or the Carquinez suspension bridge in Northern California, you know his work.

Before Barbour retired as a major in the Air Force Reserve, he was deployed twice to Iraq—in 2003 and again in 2007. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he says.

Barbour still has a home in Northern California, where he spent much of his career with Caltrans and where his wife works as an attorney. He says he’s looking to buy a place in L.A. soon.

Meanwhile, he’s got lots of 10- and 12-hour days to keep the gears moving on the 405 project. “Everybody wants to get a greener planet,” he says. “But what we’re stuck with is a society where everybody commutes. If you have it, you’ve gotta fix it.”

Posted 1/12/10
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READ RELATED 405 NEWS

Read More Stories: By Car | The 405 Report

The 405 report

January 4, 2010

Latest news

Updated 5/17/11: Plan now for huge summer 405 closing

Updated 3/03/11: A sharp U-turn on Mulholland

Updated 12/08/10: Wilshire 405 flyover ramps coming

Updated 10/12/10: Skirball Bridge demo—and detours—begin

Updated 05/05/10: Demolition time on Sunset

Updated 3/11/10: Some Westside bus passengers will soon be taking the scenic route.
And Metro would like to apologize for that in advance.

Starting in mid-March, patrons of various Metro bus lines in the Sepulveda Pass and West Los Angeles could be facing delays and detours due to the 405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project, which will add a 10-mile northbound carpool lane to the freeway.

Bus lines that travel on the freeway and through the construction area will be affected off and on until the project’s completion, now scheduled for 2013.

Lines slated to be affected are as follows:
• Line 2-302: Sunset Boulevard
• Lines 4 and 704: Santa Monica Boulevard
• Lines 20, 720 and 920: Wilshire Boulevard
• Line 761: Sepulveda Boulevard and 405

Updates also are being posted on Twitter. Metro’s hotline for the project can be reached at (213) 922-3665.

Updated 2/9/10: Work on the 405 carpool lane project has been called off for tonight due to the rain. Weather permitting, it will resume Wednesday evening. Full information can be found here Updates also are being posted on Twitter. Metro’s hotline for the project can be reached at (213) 922-3665.

Updated 1/27/10: After-hours work on the northbound 405 carpool project is expected to resume tonight, Jan. 27, with the full freeway closing from midnight to 5 a.m. between the Santa Monica Freeway and Santa Monica Boulevard. Work is to continue on Thursday and Friday nights, with full freeway closures from midnight to 5 a.m. in the segment that runs from Santa Monica Boulevard to Wilshire Boulevard. All lanes should be reopened by 5 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Full information on the closures, including detour maps, can be found here. Updates also are being posted on Twitter. Metro’s hotline for the project can be reached at (213) 922-3665.

Updated 1/22/10: If the rain ever stops, after-hours work to create a northbound carpool lane on the 405 will resume next week with at least three nights of full lane closures planned from midnight to 5 a.m. The work begins at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25, with all lanes closing after midnight on the segment of the freeway that runs from the Santa Monica Freeway to Santa Monica Boulevard. The next two nights will be devoted to the segment between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, with full freeway closures again planned from midnight to 5 a.m. Workers need to delineate new temporary lanes and install concrete barriers so construction on the 10-mile carpool lane can begin in earnest. Once the temporary lanes are in place, and a construction zone is established, northbound drivers will have the usual five lanes available to them during the three-year project. Full information on the closures, including detour maps, can be found here. Updates also are being posted on Twitter. Metro’s hotline for the project can be reached at (213) 922-3665.

Updated 1/13/09: Because of rain, work on the Sepulveda Pass project to create a northbound carpool lane is now expected to begin on Thursday, Jan. 14, at 7 p.m. The first full freeway closure will take place in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, with all lanes scheduled to reopen by 6 a.m. The work will take place on the segment of the freeway between the Santa Monica Freeway (10) and Santa Monica Boulevard. Full information on the closures, including detour maps, can be found here. Updates also are being posted on Twitter. Metro’s hotline for the project can be reached at (213) 922-3665.

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Surviving the night work on the 405

The lanes on the northbound 405 are about to get skinnier.

And, as with any New Year’s reducing regimen, there will be some pain before the gain.

Starting at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Jan. 12, night crews will begin grinding off existing lane markings and restriping them in a narrower configuration to make way for a construction zone on the freeway. It’s the kick-off to eight weeks of intensive nighttime work on the 405 Sepulveda Pass widening project—which will ultimately create a 10-mile northbound carpool lane on the 405 between the Santa Monica (10) and Ventura (101) freeways.

After the new lanes are delineated, workers beginning Feb. 8 will spend four weeks installing “k-rail”—concrete barriers to create a work zone for the project. The work will take place from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays through early March, although bad weather could delay things. The entire freeway will need to be closed at various times during the next eight weeks; those closures will take place only between midnight and 5 a.m. Work will proceed in segments, and maps of detours for affected areas are expected to be posted here later this week.

The goal is to keep the same number of lanes available during construction as there are now—a crucial consideration given the heavy usage of the freeway. When the project is finished in the spring of 2013, it will provide a connecting link in the freeway’s carpool lane system extending north from the Orange County line. In the course of the project, workers also will realign 27 on- and off-ramps; widen 13 overpasses and structures; build some 18 miles of retaining and sound walls, and remove and replace bridge overcrossings at the Skirball Center, Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive.

To help ease the pain—and to provide the opportunity for affected residents to troubleshoot the project as it moves forward—monthly meetings are being held with representatives of homeowner groups.

Read More Stories: By Car | The 405 Report

Goodbye 2009, hello free Metro rides

December 28, 2009

Saying farewell to a whole decade means a whole lotta revelry this New Year’s Eve. So if you plan on partying like it’s 2009, here’s a tip: leave your car at home.

Going Metro is not only the safer and more environmentally-appealing way to go—it’s free during prime revelry hours and open all night. (Good news if your resolutions happen to include going green, being sociable and saving money in 2010.)

All Metro trains and buses, including the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley, will be offering free rides from 9 p.m. Thursday till 2 a.m. Friday. The Orange Line, along with Metro’s Red, Purple, Blue, Green and Gold Line trains, will be running every 20 minutes from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., with regular fares kicking in after 2 a.m.

Then, if you want to cheer on Sully (a.k.a. hero pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger III) as he leads the 121st Rose Parade starting at 8 a.m., Metro’s Gold Line will be running extra trains into Pasadena on New Year’s Day. Later in the day, a train-shuttle combo will get you to the Rose Bowl, where the Ohio State Buckeyes are playing the Oregon Ducks starting at 2:10 p.m.

For a full rundown on the public transportation options as Los Angeles rings in 2010, check out Metro’s blog The Source or call 1-800-COMMUTE (266-6883).

Read More Stories: By Car

Trying to tame the fearsome 405 [updated]

November 3, 2009

The Sepulveda Pass—three words that strike terror in the hearts of drive-time commuters everywhere. But an ambitious project funded partly with federal stimulus dollars is aiming to ease the fear factor on the 405.

It won’t happen overnight. By the time it’s completed in the spring of 2013, however, the project will create a 10-mile northbound carpool lane on the 405 between the Santa Monica (10) and Ventura (101) freeways. It will provide a crucial connecting link in the freeway’s carpool lane system extending north from the Orange County line.

Relief can’t come soon enough for the hundreds of thousands of commuters who travel through the pass each day. They currently experience 15,000 “vehicle-hours” of delay daily; Caltrans estimates that unless something is done, the congestion would hit 27,800 vehicle-hours by 2015 and 59,430 by 2031.

“Most of the commute would be at a complete standstill,” says Mike Barbour, Metro’s project director on the 405 work. “If we don’t do this, it will be horrendous.”

The work extends beyond adding the carpool lane. Workers will also realign 27 on- and off-ramps; widen 13 overpasses and structures; build some 18 miles of retaining and sound walls, and remove and replace bridges at the Skirball Center, Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. Oh, and they’ll be doing some road improvements on nearby streets, too.

It’s a big job—officials say the project will create 18,000 jobs during construction, although not all of those are local. For now, workers in the pre-construction phase are busy surveying storm drains and utilities, and doing the soil testing that is essential to the design process. Project officials also are working with a community advisory committee made up of homeowners and neighborhood councils to get feedback on the design process, and will continue working with the group though construction. A community meeting will be held Nov. 19 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles.

Signs will be posted to let motorists know when the project is expected to begin and end. Traffic lanes will be reconfigured and a safe work zone set up behind those concrete barriers known as “k-rail.” Once that’s done, officials say, northbound drivers should have the same five lanes available during the project as they did before it started—and will, of course, have a new 6th lane for carpools when it’s done.

“We are doing everything we can to reduce the overall construction time frame,” Barbour says, adding there is an incentive for the contractor to finish early. Barbour urges commuters to check the project website frequently for updates during construction.

The project, a partnership of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), is expected to cost $1.034 billion, with $189.9 million coming from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and the rest from state and other federal sources.

Updated, 11/10/09:
Just in time for the holiday rush at LAX, Caltrans has opened the new carpool lane on the southbound 405 from the Santa Monica Freeway to the Marina Freeway (SR-90.) The northbound carpool lane covering the same stretch is set to open before Thanksgiving.

“It’s going to definitely alleviate the flow of traffic, especially during the holidays,” when carloads of travelers picking up or dropping off passengers can take advantage of a high-occupancy lane, says Sgt. Jim Holcomb of the LAX Airport Police.

The five-year, $167 million project—which also included work on National, Culver and Palms boulevards—makes it possible to travel via carpool lane on the southbound San Diego Freeway from the San Fernando Valley through Orange County.

Updated 12/29/09:
Night work on the 405 carpool lane project begins Jan. 12, with closures of ramps, individual lanes and the entire northbound freeway planned for various times through mid-March. The work—to lay out temporary lanes and set up protective work barriers—will take place from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays, with full closures slated only between midnight and 5 a.m. As the project moves forward, look for updated information on lane and ramp closures here.

Read More Stories: By Car | On the Westside | The 405 Report | Transportation

Traffic & transit measure R passes

January 18, 2009

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Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky hailed voter passage of County Measure R, an ambitious 30-year investment program aimed at relieving traffic congestion, repairing roads and highways, and extending the County’s subway and light-rail transit lines throughout the region. The current tally Countywide stands at 67.3% – 32.7%, but Third District voters approved the measure 72.9% – 27.1%, with support especially high in areas where traffic congestion is most acute. Here’s how Third District communities voted: