101 Freeway expansion put on hold

By John Loesing Acorn Staff Writer

A government steering committee working on plans to reduce congestion on the 101 Freeway shelved a $3.4 billion proposal last week to add new lanes from Thousand Oaks to Studio City and instead will recommend a series of cheaper, short-term projects that would improve the streets and ramps surrounding the freeway.

At its June meeting, the Metropolitan Transit Authority board is expected to approve a $500 million package of less controversial changes to the Ventura Freeway, including the improvement of a dozen freeway exit ramps from Topanga Canyon Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley to Alvarado Street in downtown Los Angeles. Another dozen or so arterial streets and intersections would be upgraded to help take the pressure off the freeway.

"Unfortunately we won’t see the kind of relief that we had hoped for," said Laurie Newman, steering committee chairwoman. "There was so much opposition, there wasn’t the political will."

The scaled-back proposal also calls for major bus and rapid transit improvements.

"Rail and bus way have to be part of planning that goes on," said Agoura Hills Mayor Jeff Reinhardt, who helped direct a three-year, $3.4 million plan to study the Ventura Freeway problems. "I agree, you cannot pave your way out of the congestion."

Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, led the fight against carpool lanes, mixed-used lanes and double-deck lanes for years. He agreed that more pavement isn’t the answer.

"Adding more freeway capacity only brings more capacity," Silver said. "Just look at the Beltway around Washington, D.C., it’s a nightmare, they keep adding more."

But Hank Yuloff, an Encino homeowner who favored the extra lanes, thinks Silver is headed down the wrong path.

"He’s an example of a ‘CAVE’—Citizens Against Virtually Everything," Yuloff said. "He wants Ventura Boulevard to look like it did in 1956 with horses walking down the middle."

Los Angeles County has 300 miles of carpool lanes, more than any metropolis in the world, but for years the lanes restricted to more than one person per vehicle were prohibited in the San Fernando Valley due to opposition from groups like Silver’s Coalition of Freeway Residents.

The carpool lanes could be out of the picture for good now that the committee has ditched plans for the freeway widening.

Although opposed to more lanes, Silver does favor the plan that calls for improvements to ramps, arterial streets and public transit.

Those projects will be quicker, relatively speaking. The "near- and mid-range" recommendations would require 10 to 15 years to complete compared to the several decades that it would take to build new lanes.

"A driver who is looking to go from Calabasas to L.A. and save his 15 minutes is going to endure 20 years of nightmare," Silver said. "What kind of relief would that be for a driver?"

Among the street improvements that the committee will recommend to the MTA include upgrades to Hampshire Road and Agoura Road from Thousand Oaks Boulevard to Las Virgenes Road. The work calls for Agoura Road and Calabasas Road to be connected between Valley Circle Boulevard and Las Virgenes Road.

The new strategy also recommends a dedicated bus way from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills and possibly to Thousand Oaks.

"I was disappointed to learn that the final recommended improvement is a massive widening of the freeway," said state Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Woodland Hills) who joined forces with state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) in putting pressure on the committee and Caltrans to change their recommendation.

"Even the MTA and Caltrans concede that this plan will, if we are lucky, barely keep traffic at (level of service) D or F," Pavley said. "And it will come at a terrible toll to the residents of the San Fernando Valley whose homes and/or livelihoods along the corridor will be wiped out."

An estimated 1,000 homes and businesses would have been displaced in the freeway widening right-of-way acquisition.

"I don’t want to move," said Christophe Sabatino, who chiropractor who operates a business out of his home near the freeway in Studio City. "They’re going to not only have to pay for relocation, but the uprooting of people’s lives. How can you put a dollar value on that?" Sabatino said.

The smaller projects would take away about 30 acres of private property compared to the more than 500 acres that would have been lost with the freeway widening.

Reinhardt would like to see a public referendum to decide the next course of action.

"Folks do want to see a carpool lane," he said. "This is something we’ve heard a lot about and that may be something that is still possible. It may call for double decking in some sections, which would not require real estate taking. The request is to put this (freeway) corridor into parity with every other corridor in Southern California."